Curing of Aged Gate Dielectric by the Self-Heating Effect in MOSFETs

Gate dielectric damage caused by both internal and external stresses is becoming worse because of aggressive complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) scaling. However, conventional technologies for damage reduction using thermal annealing during fabrication have some limitations. As a result, there is a growing demand for technologies that will cure CMOS damage as a new paradigm for improving long-term reliability. This review paper reexamines self-recovery technologies, which are fully compatible with CMOS fabrication. Although self-heating has long been considered an unwanted operating side effect, it can also be favorably utilized to cure damage. Generated Joule heat arising from device operation can uniformly anneal the gate dielectric and effectively recover damage in various devices, such as conventional logic, memory, and aerospace CMOS devices, as well as thin-film transistors for displays.