Compact Physics Hot-Carrier Degradation Model Valid over a Wide Bias Range.

We develop a compact physics model for hot-carrier degradation (HCD) that is valid over a wide range of gate and drain voltages (Vgs and Vds, respectively). Special attention is paid to the contribution of secondary carriers (generated by impact ionization) to HCD, which was shown to be significant under stress conditions with low Vgs and relatively high Vds. Implementation of this contribution is based on refined modeling of carrier transport for both primary and secondary carriers.

Impact of Nitridation on Bias Temperature Instability and Hard Breakdown Characteristics of SiON MOSFETs.

We study how nitridation, applied to SiON gate layers, impacts the reliability of planar metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) subjected to negative and positive bias temperature instability (N/PBTI) as well as hard breakdown (HBD) characteristics of these devices. Experimental data demonstrate that p-channel transistors with SiON layers characterized by a higher nitrogen concentration have poorer NBTI reliability compared to their counterparts with a lower nitrogen content, while PBTI in n-channel devices is negligibly weak in all samples independently of the nitrogen concentration. The Weibull distribution of HBD fields extracted from experimental data in devices with a higher N density are shifted towards lower values with respect to that measured in MOSFETs, and SiON films have a lower nitrogen concentration.

Correlated Time-0 and Hot-Carrier Stress Induced FinFET Parameter Variabilities: Modeling Approach.

We identify correlation between the drain currents in pristine n-channel FinFET transistors and changes in time-0 currents induced by hot-carrier stress. To achieve this goal, we employ our statistical simulation model for hot-carrier degradation (HCD), which considers the effect of random dopants (RDs) on HCD. For this analysis we generate a set of 200 device instantiations where each of them has its own unique configuration of RDs.