Hot-carrier degradation mechanism and promising device design of nMOSFETs with nitride sidewall spacer

Abstract

We investigated the HC reliability of deep submicron LDD nMOSFETs with nitride sidewalls, and found a unique stress bias dependence of HC degradation under lower stress bias conditions. This means lifetime estimations are inconclusive because of deviations from the empirical law. Moreover, we succeeded in improving HC reliability in nitride sidewall devices by shifting the location of the HC injection.