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In this work, a detailed analysis of degradation and failure of semi-vertical GaN-on-Si trench MOSFETs is reported. Off-state, semi-on state and on-state conditions were analyzed, to evaluate how the gate and drain bias can impact on the failure voltage. We demonstrate that: a) devices with a bilayer gate insulator (2.5 nm Al2O3 interface dielectric to GaN, + 35 nm SiO2 main dielectric) have a superior performance, compared to single-insulator (35 nm Al2O3) samples; b) in a drain step-stress, the gate voltage (resulting in different operating regimes, off, semi-on or on-state) can significantly impact on the failure voltage of the devices; c) stress at high VGS and/or VDS may induce a significant shift in threshold voltage, which is stronger when the devices are stressed in the on-state. The results – complemented by 2D simulations – provide a description of the factors limiting the breakdown robustness of GaN vertical transistors.

IRPS 2022 Main Conference 

Influence of Drain and Gate Potential on Gate Failure in Semi-Vertical GaN-on-Si Trench MOSFET

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 The IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices & Applications (WiPDA) provides a forum for device scientists, circuit designers, & application engineers from the Power Electronics & Electron Devices Societies to share technology updates, research findings, experience & potential applications.
 
 **Topics of interest**
* Heteroepitaxial & Bulk Materials Growth
* Gate Dielectrics & Surface Passivation
* Device Structures & Fabrication Techniques
* Device Characterization & Modeling
* Very-High Efficiency Or Compact Converters
* Safe Operating Areas Of Wide Bandgap Devices, including Short Circuit, Spike, &Transient Tolerance
* Harsh Environment (High Temperature) Operation & Reliability
* Packaging Power Modules & ICs
* Gate Drive & Other Auxiliary Circuits
* High-Performance Passive Components
* Hard-Switched & Soft-Switched Application Analysis
* Applications in Renewable Energy & Energy Storage, Transportation, Industrial Drives, Grid Power Systems, Space and Aerospace
* Wide Bandgap System Design Philosophies & Strategies
* Radio Frequency (RF) GaN
* Technology Roadmap of Wide Bandgap Including Devices, Applications and Packaging

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IEEE WiPDA 2022

The IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices & Applications (WiPDA) provides a forum for device scientists, circuit designers, & application engineers from the Power Electronics & Electron Devices Societies to share technology updates, research findings, experience & potential applications.

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#### Welcome to the 60th IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS)!

[![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/f6b8cf9ecca2209dd3e0fcebe80a2915.png)](https://underline.io/events/282/reception) [![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/e787ff477f8d2b687fb0b54d83d35e11.png)](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GAycr7pPrZG2ZzZP-geUL8vGWswjCB1N?usp=sharing) [![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/7492fafcc0c623afe96fe15207855ed9.png)](https://www.irps.org/)
 

**General Chair Welcome Message**

Welcome to IRPS 2022! When the IRPS Management Committee began making plans for Dallas, we recognized the strong desire by the reliability physics community to return to a face-to-face symposium that we last had in Monterey in 2019. But as time progressed, we recognized that travel restrictions were not being lifted as rapidly as we anticipated. Rather than leave out those of you who could not attend in person, we adopted a hybrid format allowing for both remote attendance and remote presentations. This is a first for IRPS and I am confident it will be a success for all.

With this new hybrid format, the symposium will return to the original five-day format with Tutorials and Year in Review on the first two days. The Technical Program, Keynote Talks, Workshops and Poster session will be held on the following three days. All of these (except Workshops and Posters) will be available via real-time streaming in the US Central Time zone with virtual attendees having Q&A access to the presenters. For those virtual attendees who cannot watch the live presentations, the material will be available on demand to all attendees for a month after the symposium with the ability to communicate with the authors.

In 2020, we were planning on co-hosting the International ESD Workshop (IEW) ESD workshop when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. For 2022, IEW will be seamlessly embedded into the IRPS Program and will sponsor three tutorials, an invited talk, two technical sessions and two evening workshops focused on ESD and latch-up. And we continue our
collaboration with our sister conference, European Symposium on Reliability of Electron Devices Failure Physics and Analysis (ESREF) by hosting their Best Paper and the International Integrated Reliability Workshop (IIRW) by hosting their Best Student Paper.

Our primary objective is to maintain the symposium’s leadership role in the reliability physics of microelectronic devices by attracting leading researchers to present their work and providing attendees the best place to access this information. With all the buzz in the media about whether Moore’s Law has hit its limit, IRPS has been promoting expertise developed in silicon-based reliability over the past sixty years and expanding into new material areas. This year, eight of the technical sessions are devoted to reliability in topics outside of traditional silicon, including wide bandgap GaN/SiC, emerging memory and neuromorphic computing. I hope our ability to draw these communities together will accelerate the cross-fertilization of ideas. 

The Technical Program consists of four keynote speakers, twenty-three invited speakers and eighty-seven oral presentations organized in thirty technical sessions on eighteen reliability topics. Over two evenings, there will be ten Workshops and sixty-six Poster presentations that are designed to allow in person attendees and experts to interact
with one another. With eighteen tutorials covering topics ranging from fundamental transistor and memory reliability all the way up to automotive and complex system-level reliability, this year’s symposium provides an excellent learning opportunity for engineers and scientists new to reliability as well as experienced individuals wanting to explore new
areas. The Year in Review, which serves as a summary of research in the past year, will cover 3D packaging, emerging memory and aging aware circuit designs.

Finally, I would like to express my extreme gratitude to our patrons and exhibitors, whose support makes IRPS possible.
And to all of you, our in person and virtual attendees, for supporting this symposium for sixty years!

**Charles W. Slayman, General Chair** 
**of 2022 IRPS Management Committee**
 
**About IRPS**

The IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) is the premiere conference for engineers and scientists to present new and original work in the area of microelectronics reliability. Drawing participants from the United States, Europe, Asia, and all parts of the world, IRPS seeks to understand the reliability of semiconductor devices, integrated circuits, and microelectronic assemblies through an improved understanding of both the physics of failure as well as the application environment. IRPS provides numerous opportunities for attendees to increase their knowledge and understanding of all aspects of microelectronics reliability, and to meet and network with reliability colleagues from around the world.

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IRPS provides numerous opportunities for attendees to increase their knowledge and understanding of all aspects of microelectronics reliability. It is also an outstanding chance to meet and network with reliability colleagues from around the world.

In this work an implicit finite element model of a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), connectors, and stiffener is developed. The effect of several parameters on the strain distribution on the board was analyzed. The PCB was bolted to an aluminum stiffener. The simulation went through several steps to consider the effect of the solder reflow process as well as bolt pretension forces and plug-in forces of the connectors. Based on the simulation, board warpage and bolt pretension forces had significant effect on board strain. 

Numerical Simulation and characterization of PCB Warpage

This work shows an approach to carry out the de-layering, through a series of smart solutions, of the die surface of AlGaN/GaN HEMT with 3 metal levels plus Cu-RDL, after to have performed Fault Localization in the best way – from resolution and wavelengths detection point of view – from the backside of the device without Silicon substrate, that means the final die thickness is ≈ 7µm.
This approach allows advanced physical analysis on AlGaN surface, observing at high resolution and magnification defective points and comparing them with other close areas, improving consistently the global information about the die surface. 

Failure Analysis of AlGaN/GaN Power HEMTs through an innovative sample preparation approach

The single event induced crosstalk of monolithic 3D (M3D) integrated inverter chain is investigated using GEANT4 and TCAD simulations from layout, spacing, length, supply voltage and transistor size. The accurate ionization profiles are initially obtained and modelled in TCAD. Meanwhile, the crosstalk capacitances between interconnect lines or transistors are acquired through 3D simulation. Results show that the crosstalk pulse is closely related to interconnect length and peaks at 50 µm for transistor-level M3D. Vertical alignment of PMOS and NMOS in two inverter chains (gate level) respectively on different tier is the optimal layout to mitigate the single event induced crosstalk pulse (5.9 ps and 130 mV). In addition, increasing thickness of inter-layer dielectric is the best way to eliminate the crosstalk effect nearly without area penalty, which is the intrinsic advantage compared to planar circuits. 

Single event induced crosstalk in monolithic 3D CMOS integrated circuits based on 22 nm FD-SOI

In this paper, a high holding voltage dual-directional silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) with an embedded shunt path (HVDDSCR-ESP) for high-voltage I/O electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is proposed. Based on the 0.13-μm BCD process, multi-current pulses that mimic the transmission line pulse (TLP) are applied to devices by using Sentaurus-TCAD. The results reveal that the proposed structure, compared with the conventional low-trigger dual directional SCR (LTDDSCR), has adjustable high holding voltage and good ESD robustness. In addition, the working mechanisms are also investigated, and the proposed device as the ESD cell is beneficial for the 12V applications and has no risk of latch-up.

A Novel Latch-Up-Immune DDSCR Used for 12 V Applications

Adhesion-Limit in Refractory Transition Metal (Mo) Contact Relay Operation at 300 °C— Avoiding Overestimation for Modern ICs

Adhesion-Limit in Refractory Transition Metal (Mo) Contact Relay Operation at 300 °C— Avoiding Implicated Overestimation for Modern ICs

Hot electron trapping can significantly impact the performance of GaN-based HEMTs. Within this paper, the effect of current density and electric field on the severity of hot-electron degradation is presented. The experiments demonstrate that: (i) we can isolate the hot electron trapping processes, (ii) the hot-electron induced performance degradation follows a logarithmic kinetic, which can be modeled by rate equations, and (iii) the amount of current collapse has a linear dependence on the applied electric field and a logarithmic dependence on the current density, in agreement with theoretical equations.

Hot-Electron trapping in GaN-based HEMTs

A combined experimental/simulation analysis has been performed to study the gate reliability of GaN-HEMTs with p-type gate under pulse stress conditions. Results show that the time-dependent gate breakdown (TDGB) can be determined by two factors: i) the total ON-time during which the device is subjected to a positive gate bias before the failure; ii) the number of pulses, hence the number of switching phases from OFF- to ON-State and vice versa. The severity of the degradation ascribed to transition phases depends on the OFF-time (tOFF) and transition time (tTR = tRISE = tFALL). In particular, the shorter tOFFand tTR, the higher the Schottky junction voltage drop and the current peak during the switching phase, respectively. The higher voltage drop is ascribed to the semi-floating potential of the p-GaN layer. 

Gate Reliability of p-GaN Power HEMTs Under Pulsed Stress Condition

In this paper, we propose a novel characterization methodology to study dynamic RON and VTH during a high voltage stress on the drain node of GaN-on-Si E-mode MOSc-HEMTs using a half-bridge configuration circuit and specific gate voltage waveforms. This novel setup enables to study simultaneously RON

and VTH during stress and recovery phases from 10µs to several kiloseconds. At 150°C a high carbon concentration in Carbon-doped GaN layer, reduces ON-Resistance degradation. Temperature dependent measurements show that RON degradation is related to CN acceptor traps in the GaN:C layer. High voltage drain stress induces a combination of VTH
drift and access region related dynamic RON effect.

Novel High Voltage Bias Temperature Instabilities (HV-BTI) setup to monitor RON/VTH drift of GaN-on-Si E-mode MOSc-HEMTs under high drain voltage

The overvoltage and surge energy robustness of GaN power high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) is a key gap recently identified by the JEDEC JC-70.1 committee. This work presents the first study on the parametric shift and recovery of an industrial depletion-mode metal-insulator-semiconductor HEMT (MIS-HEMT) in repetitive overvoltage switching close to its dynamic breakdown voltage. In each switching cycle, a voltage overshoot of up to 90% of dynamic breakdown voltage was applied during the device turn-OFF process. As the repetitive switching prolongs, the device showed shifts in threshold voltage, saturation current, and on-resistance, and these parametric shifts saturated after 1-million cycles. These parametric shifts are believed to be induced by the trapping of the holes generated in the impact ionization. After the repetitive switching, the device exhibited slow recovery in the natural state, at elevated temperatures, or with negative gate biases, due to the difficulty in hole removal. By contrast, applying a positive gate bias or a positive substrate bias can facilitate the hole migration towards the two-dimensional-gas (2DEG) channel for recombination, and therefore, accelerated the device recovery. In particular, a 50-V substrate bias allowed the device to recover in a few minutes. This work shows the good overvoltage robustness of GaN MIS-HEMTs and unveils effective methods for their post-switching recovery, as well as suggests the significance of hole dynamics for the device overvoltage switching close to the dynamic breakdown voltage.

GaN MIS-HEMTs in Repetitive Overvoltage Switching: Parametric Shift and Recovery

Using a full quantum mechanical calculation, we investigate the fundamental validity of the Schottky emission model for its applications to electron injection in dielectrics from a metal or semiconductor electrode. We cover a wide range of electric fields from10kV/cm to 10MV/cm and temperatures for a large range of barrier heights. We conclude the Schottky emission model is only applicable for a very small class of dielectrics under 0.1MV/cm and at high temperatures over ~330°K.  For many defective dielectrics such as BEOL/MOL and MIMCAP dielectrics with a barrier height (FB ≥ 1eV), its conduction is negligible for electric fields larger than 0.1MV/cm while thermionic-field or field emission becomes dominant. If Schottky emission process is indeed valid, then the FN tunneling current must be smaller than that of the Schottky emission process with the same FB. Several misconceptions and malpractices as widely occurred in the dielectric community have been clarified. This work carries significant impact on BEOL Breakdown model development

Quantum Mechanical Connection of Schottky Emission Mechanism and Its implications on Breakdown Methodology and Conduction Modeling for BEOL Low-k Dielectrics

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Numerical Simulation and characterization of PCB Warpage

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