Hot carrier reliability of strained N-MOSFET with lattice mismatched source/drain stressors

Abstract

The hot carrier reliability of a novel uniaxial tensile strained n-channel transistor with silicon-carbon (Si1-yCy) source and drain (S/D) regions is investigated for the first time. Strained n-FETs show reduced hot carrier lifetime than the control n-FETs when stressed at comparable I sub/Id ratio. Worst case hot carrier stressing is observed to occur at maximum substrate current Isub condition which leads to a higher drive current IDsat degradation as compared to the V GS= VDS stress. At nominal operating voltages, the strained n-FET is projected to have a hot carrier lifetime well exceeding the 10-years requirement, showing no severe reliability issues. © 2007 IEEE.