Impact of temperature and breakdown statistics on reliability predictions for ultrathin oxides

1999 ◽  
Vol 592 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Groeseneken ◽  
R. Degraeve ◽  
B. Kaczer ◽  
H.E. Maes

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the evolution in the degradation and breakdown behaviour of ultra-thin oxides when scaling the oxide thickness into the sub-4 nm range for future CMOS technology generations. It will be shown that changes in the breakdown statistics, which can be explained by a percolation model for breakdown, lead to an increased area dependence of the time-tobreakdown. This has to be taken into account when predicting the oxide reliability. Also the impact of the test methodology, the relevance of a so-called polarity gap in the charge-tobreakdown and its consequences for reliability testing, are highlighted. Moreover, a strong increase in the temperature dependence of breakdown, especially for sub-3 nm oxides, is demonstrated and the impact of temperature on trap generation and critical trap density at breakdown is discussed. Finally it is shown that the combined effects of all these phenomena might lead to oxide reliability becoming a potential showstopper for further technology scaling.

2009 ◽  
Vol 1155 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Jörg Osten ◽  
Apurba Laha ◽  
Andreas Fissel

AbstractMany materials systems are currently under consideration as potential replacements for SiO2 as the gate dielectric material for sub-0.1 μm CMOS technology. We present results for crystalline gadolinium oxides on silicon in the cubic bixbyite structure grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy. On Si(100), crystalline Gd2O3 grows usually as (110)-oriented domains, with two orthogonal in-plane orientations. Layers grown under best vacuum conditions often exhibit poor dielectric properties due to the formation of crystalline interfacial silicide inclusions. Additional oxygen supply during growth improves the dielectric properties significantly. Layers grown by an optimized MBE process display a sufficiently high-K value to achieve equivalent oxide thickness values < 1 nm, combined with ultra-low leakage current densities, good reliability, and high electrical breakdown voltage. A variety of MOS capacitors and field effect transistors has been fabricated based on these layers. Efficient manipulation of Si(100) 4° miscut substrate surfaces can lead to single domain epitaxial Gd2O3 layer. Such epi-Gd2O3 layers exhibited significant lower leakage currents compared to the commonly obtained epitaxial layers with two orthogonal domains. For capacitance equivalent thicknesses below 1 nm, this differences disappear, indicating that for ultrathin layers direct tunneling becomes dominating. We investigated the effect of post-growth annealings on layer properties. We showed that a standard forming gas anneal can eliminate flatband instabilities and hysteresis as well as reduce leakage currents by saturating dangling bond caused by the bonding mismatch. In addition, we investigated the impact of rapid thermal anneals on structural and electrical properties of crystalline Gd2O3 layers grown on Si with different orientations. The degradation of layers can be significantly reduced by sealing the layer with amorphous silicon prior to annealing.


Toxins ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 425
Author(s):  
Yunyu Tang ◽  
Haiyan Zhang ◽  
Yu Wang ◽  
Chengqi Fan ◽  
Xiaosheng Shen

This study assessed the impact of increasing seawater surface temperature (SST) and toxic algal abundance (TAA) on the accumulation, tissue distribution and elimination dynamics of paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs) in mussels. Mytilus coruscus were fed with the PSTs-producing dinoflagellate A. catenella under four simulated environment conditions. The maximum PSTs concentration was determined to be 3548 µg STX eq.kg−1, which was four times higher than the EU regulatory limit. The increasing SST caused a significant decline in PSTs levels in mussels with rapid elimination rates, whereas high TAA increased the PSTs concentration. As a result, the PSTs toxicity levels decreased under the combined condition. Additionally, toxin burdens were assessed within shellfish tissues, with the highest levels quantified in the hepatopancreas. It is noteworthy that the toxin burden shifted towards the mantle from gill, muscle and gonad at the 17th day. Moreover, variability of PSTs was measured, and was associated with changes in each environmental factor. Hence, this study primarily illustrates the combined effects of SST and TAA on PSTs toxicity, showing that increasing environmental temperature is of benefit to lower PSTs toxicity with rapid elimination rates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darina Czamara ◽  
Elleke Tissink ◽  
Johanna Tuhkanen ◽  
Jade Martins ◽  
Yvonne Awaloff ◽  
...  

AbstractLasting effects of adversity, such as exposure to childhood adversity (CA) on disease risk, may be embedded via epigenetic mechanisms but findings from human studies investigating the main effects of such exposure on epigenetic measures, including DNA methylation (DNAm), are inconsistent. Studies in perinatal tissues indicate that variability of DNAm at birth is best explained by the joint effects of genotype and prenatal environment. Here, we extend these analyses to postnatal stressors. We investigated the contribution of CA, cis genotype (G), and their additive (G + CA) and interactive (G × CA) effects to DNAm variability in blood or saliva from five independent cohorts with a total sample size of 1074 ranging in age from childhood to late adulthood. Of these, 541 were exposed to CA, which was assessed retrospectively using self-reports or verified through social services and registries. For the majority of sites (over 50%) in the adult cohorts, variability in DNAm was best explained by G + CA or G × CA but almost never by CA alone. Across ages and tissues, 1672 DNAm sites showed consistency of the best model in all five cohorts, with G × CA interactions explaining most variance. The consistent G × CA sites mapped to genes enriched in brain-specific transcripts and Gene Ontology terms related to development and synaptic function. Interaction of CA with genotypes showed the strongest contribution to DNAm variability, with stable effects across cohorts in functionally relevant genes. This underscores the importance of including genotype in studies investigating the impact of environmental factors on epigenetic marks.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ting Yang ◽  
Zifa Wang ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Alex Gbaguidi ◽  
Nubuo Sugimoto ◽  
...  

Abstract. Predicting air pollution events in low atmosphere over megacities requires thorough understanding of the tropospheric dynamic and chemical processes, involving notably, continuous and accurate determination of the boundary layer height (BLH). Through intensive observations experimented over Beijing (China), and an exhaustive evaluation existing algorithms applied to the BLH determination, persistent critical limitations are noticed, in particular over polluted episodes. Basically, under weak thermal convection with high aerosol loading, none of the retrieval algorithms is able to fully capture the diurnal cycle of the BLH due to pollutant insufficient vertical mixing in the boundary layer associated with the impact of gravity waves on the tropospheric structure. Subsequently, a new approach based on gravity wave theory (the cubic root gradient method: CRGM), is developed to overcome such weakness and accurately reproduce the fluctuations of the BLH under various atmospheric pollution conditions. Comprehensive evaluation of CRGM highlights its high performance in determining BLH from Lidar. In comparison with the existing retrieval algorithms, the CRGM potentially reduces related computational uncertainties and errors from BLH determination (strong increase of correlation coefficient from 0.44 to 0.91 and significant decrease of the root mean square error from 643 m to 142 m). Such newly developed technique is undoubtedly expected to contribute to improve the accuracy of air quality modelling and forecasting systems.


MRS Advances ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (52) ◽  
pp. 2973-2982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kerber

ABSTRACTMG/HK was introduced into CMOS technology and enabled scaling beyond the 45/32nm technology node. The change in gate stack from poly-Si/SiON to MG/HK introduced new reliability challenges like the positive bias temperature instability (PBTI) and stress induced leakage currents (SILC) in nFET devices which prompted thorough investigation to provide fundamental understanding of these degradation mechanisms and are nowadays well understood. The shift to a dual-layer gate stack also had a profound impact on the time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) introducing a strong polarity dependence in the model parameter. As device scaling continues, stochastic modeling of variability, both at time zero and post stress due to BTI, becomes critical especially for SRAM circuit aging. As we migrate towards novel device architectures like bulk FinFET, SOI FinFETs, FDSOI and gate-all-around devices, impact of self-heating needs to be accounted for in reliability testing.In this paper we summarize the fundamentals of MG/HK reliability and discuss the reliability and characterization challenges related to the scaling of future CMOS technologies.


2002 ◽  
Vol 716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nihar R. Mohapatra ◽  
Madhav P. Desai ◽  
Siva G. Narendra ◽  
V. Ramgopal Rao

AbstractThe impact of technology scaling on the MOS transistor performance is studied over a wide range of dielectric permittivities using two-dimensional (2-D) device simulations. It is found that the device short channel performance is degraded with increase in the dielectric permittivity due to an increase in dielectric physical thickness to channel length ratio. For Kgate greater than Ksi, we observe a substantial coupling between source and drain regions through the gate dielectric. We provide extensive 2-D device simulation results to prove this point. Since much of the coupling between source and drain occurs through the gate dielectric, it is observed that the overlap length is an important parameter for optimizing DC performance in the short channel MOS transistors. The effect of stacked gate dielectric and spacer dielectric on the MOS transistor performance is also studied to substantiate the above observations.


Author(s):  
Mandy Rauschner ◽  
Luisa Lange ◽  
Thea Hüsing ◽  
Sarah Reime ◽  
Alexander Nolze ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The low extracellular pH (pHe) of tumors resulting from glycolytic metabolism is a stress factor for the cells independent from concomitant hypoxia. The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of acidic pHe on gene expression on mRNA and protein level in two experimental tumor lines in vitro and in vivo and were compared to hypoxic conditions as well as combined acidosis+hypoxia. Methods Gene expression was analyzed in AT1 prostate and Walker-256 mammary carcinoma of the rat by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), qPCR and Western blot. In addition, the impact of acidosis on tumor cell migration, adhesion, proliferation, cell death and mitochondrial activity was analyzed. Results NGS analyses revealed that 147 genes were uniformly regulated in both cell lines (in vitro) and 79 genes in both experimental tumors after 24 h at low pH. A subset of 25 genes was re-evaluated by qPCR and Western blot. Low pH consistently upregulated Aox1, Gls2, Gstp1, Ikbke, Per3, Pink1, Tlr5, Txnip, Ypel3 or downregulated Acat2, Brip1, Clspn, Dnajc25, Ercc6l, Mmd, Rif1, Zmpste24 whereas hypoxia alone led to a downregulation of most of the genes. Direct incubation at low pH reduced tumor cell adhesion whereas acidic pre-incubation increased the adhesive potential. In both tumor lines acidosis induced a G1-arrest (in vivo) of the cell cycle and a strong increase in necrotic cell death (but not in apoptosis). The mitochondrial O2 consumption increased gradually with decreasing pH. Conclusions These data show that acidic pHe in tumors plays an important role for gene expression independently from hypoxia. In parallel, acidosis modulates functional properties of tumors relevant for their malignant potential and which might be the result of pH-dependent gene expression.


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