After successful completion of the course, students are able to

• explain degradation mechanisms in microelectronic devices like bias temperature instability and hot carrier degradation, which are caused by defects.
• characterize defects in devices with electrical measurement methods (charge pumping, CV measurements, single-defect spectroscopy).
• design circuits and measurement setups for defect characterization by themselves.
• program automated measurement sequences and data processing.

Modern microelectronic devices, such as transistors, have characteristic dimensions of only a few nanometers, which leads to a reduced power consumption of single devices, while at the same time allowing an increased number of devices per unit area. Notwithstanding the vast number of advantages, reliability issues like Bias Temperature Instability and Hot Carrier Degradation play an important adverse role in these structures. Broadly speaking, these effects rely on single defects in the microscopic structure which can emerge or be deactivated during normal device operation. When charged, these defects exhibit a detrimental impact on the device characteristics and thus negatively affect the device lifetime. The single charging and discharging events of such defects occur extremely fast and their impact can be difficult to defect. This behavior poses a very interesting challenge for their experimental characterization and detection. Considering general-purpose instruments, single defects can hardly be analyzed at the required level of detail and thus do not lead to very satisfying results.

This lecture is focused on tackling current issues in defect spectroscopy and the reliability of microelectronic devices. This especially covers the following tasks:

• Experimental analysis of single defects in transistors.
• Further development of existing measurement setups.
• Hardware and software development, ethernet, touch-display.
• Programming of FPGAs and microprocessors.
• Implementation of analysis software tools using Python or C/C++.
• Literature study.

Work on a practical project, frequent discussions with the supervisor, presentation of the final results.

Time: Monday, 14:15

Location: Zoom Meeting, https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/98911946351

Start: Monday, October 11th, 14:15

Presentation and discussion of project.