Stress Induced Leakage Current and Radiation Induced Leakage Current in MOS devices with ultra-thin gate oxide

Contemporary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (MOS) FETs are fabricated by using deep-submicron technologies where the oxide thickness is lower than tox=10 nm. In these devices leakage current across the oxide at low oxide fields (3 MV/cm2<Eox<6 MV/cm2) can increase after electrical or radiation stresses. This leakage is known as stress induced leakage current (SILC) or radiation induced leakage current (RILC). In this contribution we show that both SILC and RILC have similar conduction mechanisms identifiable in electron assisted tunnelling through oxide neutral traps.