Statistical modeling of hot-electron and ESD-induced degradation in non-isothermal device

This dissertation addresses the integrated circuit industry needs for non-isothermal simulation in device reliability analysis, initial input factor sensitivity analysis and their software implementation. The key reliability issues are the hot-electron induced oxide damages which result in the device degradation and electro-static discharge (ESD) damages which may cause failure in circuit operation. The main purpose of this work is to provide a design aid tool to improve device reliability and performance. The reliability simulator developed in this dissertation not only predicts designed device reliability, but also provides some information about the effect of manufacturing variations on reliability. This is accomplished by combining the statistical methodology with existing technology computer aided design (TCAD) tools. Due to the self-heating effect of small geometry and silicon-on-insulator MOSFET's, temperature effects have been included in the device simulations to obtain accurate results. The reliability analysis have been performed on SOI MOS devices (partially depleted and fully depleted SOI) and bulk-silicon MOS to verify the applied modeling method. The results of the analysis will be presented and discussed through this dissertation. This dissertation has also shown that the DoE (design of experiment) technique call be successfully employed to analyze the effect of manufacturing variations on the SOI device reliability.