Dielectric breakdown is a sudden and catastrophic increase in the conductivity of an insulator caused by electrical stress. It is one of the major reliability issues in electronic devices using insulating films as gate insulators and in energy and memory capacitors. Despite extensive studies, our understanding of the physical mechanisms driving the breakdown process remains incomplete, and atomistic models describing the dielectric breakdown are controversial. This Review surveys the enormous amount of data and knowledge accumulated from experimental and theoretical studies of dielectric breakdown in different insulating materials, focusing on describing phenomenological models and novel computational approaches.

电介质击穿是由电应力引起的绝缘体电导率的突然且灾难性的增加。这是使用绝缘膜作为栅极绝缘体的电子设备以及能量和存储电容器中的主要可靠性问题之一。尽管进行了广泛的研究，我们对驱动击穿过程的物理机制的理解仍然不完整，并且描述介电击穿的原子模型存在争议。本综述调查了不同绝缘材料介电击穿的实验和理论研究中积累的大量数据和知识，重点描述唯象模型和新颖的计算方法。