Reliability of ultrathin JVD silicon nitride MNSFETs under high field stressing

Abstract

In this paper, we study the reliability of n-channel Metal-Nitride-Silicon FETs fabricated using ultrathin Jet Vapor Deposited (JVD) Silicon Nitride gate dielectric under constant voltage stressing. Due to the stress, shifts in threshold voltage and transconductance as well as interface state generation are observed. Our study shows that degradation is polarity dependent. MNSFETs show lower degradation when the applied stress voltage is positive. We have also compared the performance of MNSFETs with conventional MOSFETs under identical stress conditions. Under positive stressing, MNSFETs clearly outperform the MOSFETs but under negative stressing MNSFETs show more degradation.