Hot Carrier Reliability of Strained N-Mosfet with Lattice Mismatched Source/Drain Stressors

The hot carrier reliability of a novel uniaxial tensile strained n-channel transistor with silicon-carbon (Si
₁
-
_y
C
_y
) source and drain (S/D) regions is investigated for the first time. Strained n-FETs show reduced hot carrier lifetime than the control n-FETs when stressed at comparable I
_sub
/I
_d
ratio. Worst case hot carrier stressing is observed to occur at maximum substrate current I
_sub
condition which leads to a higher drive current I
_Dsat
degradation as compared to the V
_GS
= V
_GS
stress. At nominal operating voltages, the strained n-FET is projected to have a hot carrier lifetime well exceeding the 10-years requirement, showing no severe reliability issues.