Electrical and physical characterization of deuterium sinter on submicron devices

The impact of a deuterium (D2) sinter under two different annealing conditions, 450 °C/60 min and 450 °C/90 min, was studied and compared to the traditional forming gas (FG) sinter. Channel hot carrier (CHC) measurements indicated that while the D2 sinter for 60 min improves the lifetime of the devices by 10× over the FG sinter, an additional increase in the D2 anneal time actually has a negative impact on lifetime. DC current–voltage measurements also showed that samples sintered in D2 ambient for 60 min were the least prone to degradation under stress. Gated diode results showed no appreciable amount of difference in the initial interface state density among the different samples. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy indicated that neither poly nor salicide appears to be a complete barrier to D2 diffusion.