A study of flicker noise in n- and p-MOSFETs with ultra-thin gate oxide in the direct-tunneling regime

Flicker noise characteristics of 1.5 nn direct-tunneling gate oxide n- and pMOSFETs have been investigated It was confirmed that in the shorter gate length region, less than 0.2 /spl mu/m, the flicker noise decreased with the decrease in gate oxide thickness even in the direct-tunneling regime. On the contrary, it was found that with gate length larger than 0.45 /spl mu/m, the flicker noise becomes larger than that of the thicker gate oxide MOSFETs due to large gate leakage current. The degradation of flicker noise after charge injection was also compared for MOSFETs with various gate oxide thickness.