Near-zero-field magnetoresistance measurements: A simple method to track atomic-scale defects involved in metal-oxide-semiconductor device reliability.

We demonstrate the ability of a relatively new analytical technique, near-zero-field magnetoresistance (NZFMR), to track atomic-scale phenomena involved in the high-field stressing damage of fully processed Si metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. We show that the technique is sensitive to both the P and P dangling bond centers and that the presence of both centers can be inferred through NZFMR via hyperfine interactions with the central Si atoms of the dangling bonds. The NZFMR results also provide evidence for the redistribution of mobile hydrogen atoms at the Si/SiO interface and also a potential change in the average dipolar coupling constant between electrons in neighboring defects. This work shows that NZFMR offers significant analytical power for studying technologically relevant semiconductor device reliability problems and has advantages in experimental simplicity over comparable techniques.