Low-field latent plasma damage depassivation in thin-oxide MOS

Abstract A novel plasma-process induced damage depassivation method is proposed. Using a staircase-like stress voltage and varying the stress time, we were able to depassivate the latent damage at very low-field on both nMOS and pMOS devices. The dynamic of the interface traps generation is studied; pMOS devices show a peculiar behavior, which can be explained understanding the mechanisms involved in damage depassivation. The energy of carriers is identified as the damaging factor.