Soft Fault Diagnosis in EmbeddedSwitched-Capacitor Filters

Abstract

Due to strong requirement in term of capacitance voltage linearity, MIM capacitance stability during the whole operating lifetime of the product appears to be a key issue to warrant the reliability of this device. Using a constant current stress, two effects can be noticed on the evolution of the stressed C–V characteristics: a voltage shift to negative bias and a significant increase of the capacitance. Both phenomena have been demonstrated to be strongly correlated and to have the same origin: the trapped charges in oxide, which can generate new dipoles in the dielectric and, as a result, modulate the dielectric permittivity.