The Effect of Thermal Annealing on Stress-Induced Leakage Current in Gate Oxides

Stress-induced leakage current caused by electrical stress and the recovery due to annealing has been investigated in MOS capacitors present in flash memories. The thermal annealing process in air shows exponential recovery behaviour with respect to time. Additionally, the process exhibits Arrhenius behaviour, such that the rate of reaction of the annealing process is proportional to the annealing temperature. An average activation energy of 0.065 eV was calculated. However, significant recovery due to annealing is not expected at typical operating temperatures of flash memories