A systematic method for simulating total ionizing dose effects using the finite elements method

Simulation of total ionizing dose effects in field isolation of FET technologies requires transport mechanisms in the oxide to be considered. In this work, carrier transport and trapping in thick oxides using the finite elements method in the Synopsys Sentaurus platform are systematically simulated. Carriers are generated in the oxide and are transported out through a direct contact with the gate and thermionic emission to the silicon. The method is applied to calibrate experimental results of 400 nm SiO₂ capacitors irradiated at total doses of 11.6 kRad ( SiO₂ ) and 58 kRad ( SiO₂ ). Drift–diffusion-enabled trapping as well as other issues that arise from the involved physics are discussed. Effective bulk trap densities and activation energies of the traps are extracted.