Tunnel oxide degradation under pulsed stress

A key issue for Flash cell scaling down is the reduction of tunnel oxide thickness limited by the higher gate leakage current (Stress Induced Leakage Current, SILC) after cycling. It is possible to reduce the oxide degradation during cycling by reducing the stress pulse duration and increase the time between pulses. This allows the annealing of precursor sites with an overall reduction of stable traps. Aim of this work is the investigation of the SILC induced by pulsed stress and the corresponding charge trapped in the oxide during stress. The impact of the oxidation technology will also be discussed.