Displacement Damage, Total Ionizing Dose, and Transient Ionization Effects in Gate-All-Around Field Effect Transistors

Abstract

Recent developments in state-of-the-art (SOTA) complementary metaloxide-semiconductors (CMOS) integrated circuits (IC) have yielded devices with a robust response to total ionizing dose (TID), and improved dose-rate upset (DRU). However, the Gate-All-Around (GAA) device architecture fundamentally changes the gate and isolation dielectric structures, with unknown impact on TID performance. In addition, the adoption of GAA architecture isolates the active device regions from the underlying silicon substrate in a way that makes these transistors behave like devices based on silicon-on-insulator technology. This dramatically reduces the radiationinduced charge collection volume of the transistor, which may significantly improve the DRU and single event effect response of GAA ICs. As these devices get adopted by industry (announced by Integrated Device Manufacturers), it is paramount to understand their performance and failure mechanisms in space radiation environments before their integration in satellite systems. In this work, we expose GAAs to a variety of surrogate radiation environments, and model relevant space radiation effects. Specifically, we use Li ions to create displacement damage (DD) in these devices. Since using ions creates a significant amount of total ionizing dose (TID), we use an electron beam to test the effects of the TID alone. Lastly, since the linear energy transfer (LET) of Li ions is a small fraction compared to the LET of cosmic rays, we also investigate the response to transient ionization by irradiating GAAs with high-intensity visible light, creating a high density of electron−hole pairs without DD.