Negative bias temperature instability has become an important reliability concern for ultra-scaled Silicon IC technology with significant implications for both analog and digital circuit design. In this paper, we construct a comprehensive model for NBTI phenomena within the framework of the standard reaction–diffusion model. We demonstrate how to solve the reaction–diffusion equations in a way that emphasizes the physical aspects of the degradation process and allows easy generalization of the existing work. We also augment this basic reaction–diffusion model by including the temperature and field-dependence of the NBTI phenomena so that reliability projections can be made under arbitrary circuit operating conditions. (Read more)

I studied the effects of grown-in hydrogen on the lifetime of Czochralski-grown silicon crystals. It was found that grown-in hydrogen degraded the electrical properties of Czochralski-grown silicon crystals by enhancing the formation of recombination centers, which had a high thermal stability... (Read more)

The B-H complex in Si can be aligned by stress and reorients with an activation energy of roughly 0.2 eV. We combine new measurements of the reorientation kinetics of the B-H complex made by the stress-induced dichroism technique with previous internal friction results to show that the reorientation... (Read more)

Deep levels in vanadium-doped n- and p-type silicon have been investigated using deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and concentration profile measurements. The DLTS measurement reveals two electron traps of E_C−0.20 eV and... (Read more)

The elastic energy loss between 60 and 300 K was measured in SiB_xH_y at frequencies between 2.4 and 32 kHz. A single-time relaxation process appears in the neighborhood of 130 K, which is due to the stress-induced jumps of H around B, with a relaxation time... (Read more)

The motion of hydrogen in the B-H complex in silicon has been studied. An applied stress is used to produce a preferential alignment of the B-H complex at temperatures sufficiently high for the H to move within the complex (above ∼60 K). This alignment of the complexes is detected by comparing the... (Read more)