Impact of lateral source/drain abruptness on device performance

This paper presents a detailed study of the impact of lateral doping abruptness in the source/drain extension region and the gate-extension overlap length on device performance. Proper choice of the metric used to compare the different device designs is essential. Series resistance and threshold voltage roll-offs are shown to be incomplete measures of device performance that could lead to inconsistent lateral abruptness requirements. While series resistance is seen to improve with increasing junction abruptness, threshold voltage roll-off could be degraded by both lateral junctions that are too gradual and too abrupt - in contrast to the conventional scaling assumptions. The I_on (supernominal)-I_off (subnominal) plot, which takes into account statistical variations of gate length, is proposed as a good metric for comparing different device technology designs. Gate-extension overlap length is shown to interact with lateral doping abruptness and to have a significant impact on device performance.