9420585 Rosenbaum Three questions will be investigated and the answers will provide a practical focus for future work on the subject of silicon dioxide. First, physical experimentation will be used to study reliability of very thin oxides and to discover deficiencies in the current understanding. Second, through analysis of experimental data and extensive discussions will reliability engineers from industry, present models for oxide reliability will be evaluated and note will be made of those which are considered inadequate. Finally, a determination will be made as to which aspects of oxide reliability will, in practice, limit the reliability o future integrated circuits. A variety of circuit types will be considered, such as, logic circuits, non-volatile memories, and DRAM, as different circuits may be limited by different oxide reliability problems. The final goal of this work is incorporation of models for oxide reliability in a design-for-reliability CAD tool; however, the focus of the activities on reliability physics and modeling rather than on algorithm development. Since development of a useful design tool provides the motivation for this research, significant effort will be made during the grant period to interact with the intended users of such tools, namely, industrial reliability and design engineers. ***
