DC and AC hot-carrier characteristics of partially depleted SOI MOSFETS with ultra-thin gate dielectrics

With the introduction of ultra-thin (<15/spl Aring/) gate dielectrics especially DPN (decoupled plasma nitridation), which has a significantly higher nitrogen concentration, and thus a higher dielectric constant, various transistor reliability issues such as DC and AC HCI (hot carrier injection) characteristics need to be revisited and compared with that of previous generation technologies, such as furnace-NO (F-NO). In this paper, the following HCI characteristics will be carefully investigated and compared: furnace-NO versus DPN; NFET versus PFET: bulk versus SOI; polythickness effect; HCI temperature and thickness dependence in DPN.