Distribution of oxide breakdown in Si wafers compared with the region of grown-in defects

The breakdown distributions of thin oxide on silicon wafers were compared with those of grown-in defects. The region that showed the bad breakdown characteristics in voltage and yield was the annular area of latent oxidation-induced stacking faults (OSFs) and its fringe areas. As compared with this, the region inside the OSF ring was lightly deteriorated while the outside showed nearly perfect gate oxide integrity (GOI). The areas of grown-in defects such as flow pattern defects and crystal-originated particles generally formed in the wafer center, previously known as the main cause of GOI degradation, were not matched clearly with the bad GOI region but correlated well with the high field breakdown region in the thin gate oxide. (C) 1999 The Electrochemical Society. S1099-0062(98)09-093-2. All rights reserved.