Hot-carrier-degradation measured with charge-pumping in trench devices despite deep contacts

Understanding charge traps near the Si/SiO 2 interface of Silicon transistors is important for improving the performance and reliability of these semiconductor devices. The most relevant traps are located in the region where the transistor channel forms and impact the device threshold voltage and on-resistance. Charge pumping (CP) is a very powerful method to characterize interface defects and is frequently used after hot-carrier degradation (HCD) as well as other reliability concerns. However, modern Si trench devices make use of a deep contact which shortens the source and the body in the device. This renders CP at the gate and thus a detailed characterization of HCD on one and the same device impossible. Here, we present a solution by introducing a specially designed structure with a lateral separation of the body and source contacts. We provide details on the experiment parameters and show first results of the HCD characterization for such trench devices.