Performance and Reliability of Strained-Silicon nMOSFETs With SiN Cap Layer

Author

Giusi, Gino ; Crupi, Felice ; Simoen, Eddy ; Eneman, Geert ; Jurczak, Malgorzata

Author_Institution

Inst. for Microelectron. & Microsystems, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Catania

Volume

54

Issue

1

fYear

2007

Firstpage

78

Lastpage

82

Abstract

A complete comparison of performance and reliability between polysilicon gate/SiON oxide nMOSFETs with and without SiN cap layer is presented. The uniaxial tensile strain induced by the cap layer causes an improvement in the channel current drive capability without degrading the noise performance. The gain in the transconductance, for the strained devices, was found to decrease for increasing channel lengths and for higher channel fields. Similar robustness against hot carrier stress, bias-temperature instability, and time to breakdown were found between strained and unstrained-silicon devices, confirming the advantages of strain technology

Keywords

MOSFET; elemental semiconductors; hot carriers; semiconductor device reliability; silicon; silicon compounds; thermal stability; Si; SiN; SiN cap layer; SiON; SiON oxide nMOSFET; bias-temperature instability; hot carrier stress; polysilicon gate MOSFET; strained-silicon devices; strained-silicon nMOSFET; uniaxial tensile strain; unstrained-silicon devices; Capacitive sensors; Degradation; Electric breakdown; Hot carriers; MOSFETs; Noise robustness; Silicon compounds; Tensile strain; Tensile stress; Transconductance; Low-frequency noise; reliability; strained-silicon;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2006.887198

Filename

4039694