Unifying the Thermal-Chemical (TC) and Anode-Hole-Injection (AHI) gate-oxide breakdown models

Recent experimental data obtained from medium thickness, high-quality thermal-oxide clearly indicates that the logarithmic oxide lifetime is linearly proportional to the oxide field in the mid-to-low field range. This strong support for the E model lends credibility to the Thermal-Chemical (TC) model proposed by McPherson et al. In this work, the critical weakness of the TC model, namely the absence of the effect of electrons and holes on breakdown lifetime is removed by integrating the TC model with the Anode-Hole-Injection (AHI) model. I single kinetic model is constructed and a single master equation is found for the new unified model. This master equation for trap generation can successfully explain a wide range of experimental observations.