Channel engineering in n-MOSFETs: scaling trends for hot electron injection and device degradation

Drain engineering has been the primary focus of efforts to overcome reliability trade-offs dictated by channel hot electron injection (CHEI) into the oxide in MOSFET devices. Comparatively few studies on channel, or vertical, engineering have been conducted, though recently there has been increased interest in its applications. In this study we employ a reliability simulation package to investigate the potential of channel engineering for future silicon technology by comparing scaling trends of CHEI and device sensitivity to the resulting distributions of induced interface damage for both Super-Steep-Retrograde (SSR) channel designs and more conventional (CONV) channel designs.