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Is Dielectric (Breakdown) Research at a Crossroad? Its Impact on Technology Innovation
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DOI：10.1109/ted.2026.3666468.png)
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Abstract
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Dielectric breakdown (BD) not only is a technologically important concern as a failure mechanism for electronic circuits/products but also carries scientific significance in understanding the physical nature of the BD process, which transforms an insulator from a pristine state to a degraded state and finally to a fragmental state. While much progress was made in the past, we will discuss two long-standing issues: 1) dielectric strength (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_{\text {DS}\_{\text {AVA}}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and its relation to conventional electrical BD measurements (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_{\text {BD}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {BD}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) and 2) area-dependent BD. In this article, we show that <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_{\text {BD}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is ill-defined, and its inverse thickness dependence is not universal. We demonstrate that voltage-to-BD (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {BD}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) is a fundamental measure of dielectric quality. By clarifying the cause-and-effect relationship, we address common misconceptions in reliability research related to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${E}_{\text {DS}\_{\text {AVA}}} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> and E<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">BD</sub> modeling and measurements. On the other hand, we reveal that area-dependent dielectric BD—a physical phenomenon often neglected—naturally occurs within the BD process itself. By reviewing recent findings on reverse and diminishing area-dependent BD, we show how the dynamic interplay between defect generation and annihilation leads to diverse BD area scaling schemes, offering scalable solutions for future electronic technology roadmaps. Last, we summarize our current understanding of dielectric BD in light of these two key topics and propose directions for future research.
Keywords:
Annihilation
area-scaling
avalanche
breakdown (BD)
defect generation
density functional theory (DFT)
dielectric BD
dielectric strength
hard BD (HBD)
resistive random access memory (ReRAM)
reverse-area scaling
time-dependent dielectric BD (TDDB)
Journal
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3.2
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685
Citations:
3.7W
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