Effect of dynamic stress on off leakage of small-dimension pMOSFETs at high temperature

Abstract

The degradation of the off leakage current I off in small-dimension pMOSFETs is investigated experimentally while applying a dynamic stress to the pMOSFETs. During the OFF-state stress, the dynamic stress induced an increase of I off due to generation of negative oxide charges N ox in the gate dielectric, and in the shallow trench isolation (STI) near the gate edge. When channel width W decreased, negative N ox in STI increase I off significantly, and the degradation of I off is more critical than degradation of V th. These observations indicate that the effect of the dynamic stress in pMOSFETs on I off should be seriously considered when evaluating small-dimension pMOSFETs.

Effect of reverse body bias on hot-electron-induced punchthrough reliability of pMOSFETs with thin gate dielectric at high temperatures

“…1) The importance of HEIP degradation for a sub-100 nm device was reported by a few researchers. 17,18) Such researchers emphasized the strong dependence of HEIP degradation on the channel length L g because the decrease in effective channel length increased the lateral electric field. The reverse V SB as well as L g can increase the lateral electric field significantly.…”