Calculations of Avalanche Breakdown in Silicon Dioxide.

A survey is given of published experimental and theoretical studies of breakdown in silicon dioxide. The mechanism of oxide breakdown is still an active controversy. The Harry Diamond Laboratories DIODE computer program has been used to study avalanche breakdown in oxide films in the 100-ps time scale. Constant voltage ramp rates, and sinusoidal applied voltages have been used for the calculations. It was shown that an avalanche-recombination process can produce a current decay before breakdown. This behavior was noted by Harari in 100-s time-scale measurements. Straight lines of the same range of slopes are obtained when the computed and measured overvoltages are plotted against ramp rate on a log-log plot. It was shown that the avalanche-recombination interaction can lead to hole accumulation at the anode or at the cathode, depending upon the applied voltage. The power required for breakdown was shown to increase with an increase in frequency for sinusoidal applied voltages. Keywords Silicon dioxide, Avalanche breakdown, Recombination, Computer simulation, Voltage ramp, Sinusoidal voltage, Metal oxide semiconductors, BreakdownElectronic threshold, AvalancheElectronics.