A new monitor to predict hot-carrier damage of PMOS transistors

Damage due to hot-carrier degradation of PMOS transistors is analyzed in detail for various transistor types. The authors describe the worst-case degradation mechanism and propose a new damage monitor. The damage caused by hot-carrier degradation is well characterized by channel shortening normalized on oxide thickness. This new monitor may be used to predict the damage over a large factor (10/sup 5/) in time when the damage after a short time is measured. The electrical characteristics after hot-carrier degradation are shown to be fully determined when the channel shortening is predicted by the proposed method.<>