Time-Dependent Dielectric Breakdown of 4H-SiC/SiO₂ MOS Capacitors

Time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) is one of the major issues concerning long-range reliability of dielectric layers in SiC-based high-power devices. Despite the extensive research on TDDB of Si0₂ layers on Si, there is a lack of high-quality statistical TDDB data of SiO₂ layers on SiC. This paper presents comprehensive TDDB data of 4H-SiC capacitors with a SiO₂ gate insulator collected over a wide range of electric fields and temperatures. The results show that at low fields, the electric field acceleration parameter is between 2.07 and 3.22 cm/MV. At fields higher than 8.5 MV/cm, the electric field acceleration parameter is about 4.6 cm/MV, indicating a different failure mechanism under high electric field stress. Thus, lifetime extrapolation must be based on failure data collected below 8.5 MV/cm. Temperature acceleration follows the Arrhenius model with activation energy of about 1 eV, similar to thick SiO₂ layers on Si. Based on these experimental data, we propose an accurate model for lifetime assessment of 4H-SiC MOS devices considering electric field and temperature acceleration, area, and failure rate percentile scaling. It is also demonstrated that temperatures as high as 365 °C can be used to accelerate TDDB of SiC devices at the wafer level.