Understanding the suppressed charge trapping in relaxed- and strained-Ge/SiO2/HfO2 pMOSFETs and implications for the screening of alternative high-mobility substrate/dielectric CMOS gate stacks

We study charge trapping in a variety of Ge-based pMOS and nMOS technologies, either with Si passivation and conventional SiO₂/HfO₂ gate stack, or with GeO_x/high-k gate stacks. A general model for understanding this phenomenon in alternative substrate/dielectric systems is proposed. We discuss two different approaches to pursue a reduction of charge trapping in alternative material systems, which will be necessary for achieving reliable high-mobility devices.