A substrate hot holes injection method is used to quantitatively examine the roles of electrons and holes separately in thin gate oxides breakdown.The shift of threshold voltage under different stress is discussed.It is indicated that positive charges are trapped in SiO 2 while hot electrons are necessary for SiO 2 breakdown.The anode holes injection model and the electron traps generation model is linked into a consistent model,describing the oxide wearout as an electron correlated holes trap creation process.The results show that the limiting factor in thin gate oxides breakdown depends on the balance between the amount of injected hot electrons and holes.The gate oxides breakdown is a two step process.The first step is hot electron's breaking Si-O bonds and producing some dangling bonds to be holes traps.Then the holes are trapped and a conducted path is produced in the oxides.The joint effect of hot electrons and holes makes the thin gate oxides breakdown complete.
