Soft breakdown in titanium-silicided shallow source/drain junctions

Electrical characterization of the leakage current in p⁺/n shallow junctions (X_j=130 nm) shows that the current increases dramatically with titanium thickness and strongly depends on the reverse-bias voltage. The activation energy of leakage current extracted from the temperature dependence of the current decreases with increasing reverse-bias voltage. This behavior cannot be explained by the Shockley-Hall-Read (SHR) generation-recombination mechanism. A mechanism involving Frenkel-Poole barrier lowering of a trap potential is proposed