Evaluation technology of VLSI reliability using hot carrier luminescence

An evaluation technology for VLSI reliability using hot carrier luminescence has been developed. Problems with conventional electrical methods have been solved by the analysis of weak luminescence emitted from operating devices. Two applications are described. First, for the gate oxide evaluation, it is found that the best stress condition is determined by monitoring uniform photon count distribution emitted from the gate capacitors. Second, a method is proposed to find the weakest transistor in an LSI circuit against hot-carrier-induced degradation by counting photon emissions. This method is applied to the analysis of SRAMs (static RAMs) when the transistors to be improved have been detected.< >