A Discharge-Based Pulse Technique for Probing the Energy Distribution of Positive Charges in Gate Dielectric

Characterizing positive charges and its energy distribution in gate dielectric is useful for process qualification. A discharge-based technique is introduced to extract their energy distribution both within and beyond substrate band-gap. This paper investigates the difficulties in its implementation on typical industrial parameter analyzer and provides solutions. For the first time, we demonstrate the technique's applicability to the advanced 22-nm fabrication process and its capability in evaluating the impact of different strains on the energy distribution. The test time is within several hours. This, together with its implementation on industrial parameter analyzer, makes it a useful tool in the semiconductor manufacturing foundries for process monitoring and optimization.