The role of hydrogen in negative bias temperature instability of pMOSFET

The NBTI degradation phenomenon and the role of hydrogen during NBT stress are presented in this paper. It is found that PBT stress can recover a fraction of V_th shift induced by NBTI. However, this recovery is unstable. The original degradation reappears soon after reapplication of the NBT stress condition. Hydrogen-related species play a key role during a device's NBT degradation. Experimental results show that the diffusion species are neutral, they repassivate Si dangling bond which is independent of the gate voltage polarity. In addition to the diffusion towards gate oxide, hydrogen diffusion to Si-substrate must be taken into account for it also has important influence on device degradation during NBT stress.