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Publication
MRS Proceedings 1992
Conference paper
Impact ionization, degradation, and breakdown in SiO2
Abstract
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 mechanisms due to trap creation and impact ionization by electrons with energies exceeding 2 and 9 eV (the SiO2 bandgap energy), respectively. The temperature dependence of charge-to-breakdown is also shown to be consistent with that of these two defect-producing mechanisms.