Nanoscale Analysis of Breakdown Induced Crack Propagation in DTSCR Devices.

In the advanced technology process, owing to the low and tunable trigger voltage, diode-triggered SCRs (DTSCRs) are widely used in low-voltage applications with extremely narrow electrostatic discharge (ESD) design margins. The breakdown of DTSCRs ESD structure with abnormal leakage current under transmission line pulsing stressing was studied in this work. The physical origins of DTSCRs have been established through failure analysis (FA). The mismatch of the thermal expansion coefficient of local materials results in redundant stress. Such redundant stress induce the structure dislocations and cracks were captured by transmission electron microscopy at atomic scale. A multi-physical simulation is conducted to scrutinize the breakdown transient process.