Plasma Charging Damage

This book provides an in-depth, comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of the subject of plasma charging damage in modern VLSI circuit manufacturing. It is written for beginners as well as practitioners. For beginners, this book presents an easy-to-follow, unified explanation of various charging-damage phenomena, the goal being to provide them with a solid foundation for taking on real damage problems encountered in VLSI manufacturing. For practitioners, it can help bridge the gap between disciplines by providing all of the necessary background materials in one place. Drawing on the author's wide range of experience in plasma science, processing technologies, device physics and reliability physics, the text includes information on: - plasma and mechanisms of plasma damage; - wear-out and breakdown of thin gate-oxides; - the impact of processing equipment on damage; - methods of damage measurement; - damage management; - gate-oxide scaling.