The polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) TFT has two insulator interfaces between the polycrystalline silicon and front and back insulators. These interfaces have trap states, which affect the characteristics of poly-Si TFT. In the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology area, using the dual-gated, fully-depleted SOI MOSFET under the depleted back-channel condition, the back-interface trap density can be calculated through the front-channel threshold voltage and film thicknesses. The front-interface trap density is also evaluated changing the roles of both gates. This evaluation method for front- and back- interface trap densities is called the threshold-voltage method. To apply this threshold-voltage method to the "medium-thickness" poly-Si TFT, of which the channel is not fully depleted in normal single gate bias operation, the biases for both front and back gates are controlled to realize full depletion. Under the fully-depleted condition, the front- or back- threshold voltage of poly-Si TFT is carefully extracted by the second-derivative method changing back- and front- gate biases. We evaluated the front- and back- interface trap densities not only for normal operation but also under stress. To evaluate the bias and temperature stress effect, we used two types of samples, which are made by different processes. The evaluated front- and back- interface trap densities for both samples in initial state are around 51011 to 1.31012 cm-2eV-1, which are almost the same as the reported values. Applying bias and temperature stress shows the variation of these interface-trap densities. Samples with large shifts of the front-channel threshold voltage show large trap density variation. On the other hand, samples with small threshold voltage shifts show small trap density variation. The variation of the back-interface trap density during the stress application showed a correlation to the front-channel threshold voltage shift.

This paper presents the effect of stress on device degradation in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) due to stud bumping. Stud bumping above the MOSFET region generates interface traps at the Si/SiO2 interface and results in the degradation of transconductance in N-channel MOSFETs. The interface traps are apparently eliminated by both nitrogen and hydrogen annealing. However, the hot-carrier immunity after hydrogen annealing is one order of magnitude stronger than that after nitrogen annealing. This effect is explained by the termination of dangling bonds with hydrogen atoms.

The buried oxide nonintegrities, represented as the equivalent fixed oxide charge and interface trap densities at both the upper and lower interface of buried oxide, are evaluated for low-dose and high-dose SIMOX wafers, and their effects on device characteristics are investigated. The equivalent fixied oxide charge and trap densities at the lower interface, which are measured with buried oxide capacitors, are negligibly small in as-fabricated SIMOX wafers. This result enables us to make an analytical model of the parasitic drain/source-to-substrate capacitance in an SOI MOSFET, in which the effect of the depletion layer under the buried oxide is considered. The influence of thinner buried oxide and process-induced fixed oxide charge on the parasitic capacitance is explored with this model. The equivalent fixed oxide charge and trap densities at the upper interface are evaluated by the threshold voltage measurement in an SOI NMOSFET. The principle of this evaluation as well as the experimental technique are described in detail. The oxide charge and trap densities at the upper interface are higher than those at the lower interface for both SIMOX wafers. With a new model of the subthreshold slope based on a two-dimensional potential analysis the influence of the trap at the upper interface is discussed.