Degradation and breakdown of silicon dioxide films on silicon

Destructive breakdown in silicon dioxide is shown to be strongly correlated to the oxide degradation caused by hot-electron-induced defect production and charge trapping near the interfaces of the films. Two well-defined transitions in the charge-to-breakdown data as a function of field and oxide thickness are shown to coincide with the onset of trap creation and impact ionization by electrons with energies exceeding 2 and 9 eV, respectively.