Deep submicron nitrided-oxide CMOS technology for 3.3-V operation

Deep-submicron CMOSFETs with ONO (reoxidized nitrided oxide) gate dielectrics have been demonstrated to satisfy 3.3-V operation, contrary to conventional SiO/sub 2/ FETs. The 1.4- mu m ONO CMOS devices achieve (1) an improved saturation transconductance g/sub m/ of 250 mu S/ mu m for n-FETs together with acceptably small degradation in p-FET g/sub m/, resulting in an excellent CMOS gate delay time of 55 ps/stage (comparable or superior to the device/circuit performance of SiO/sub 2/ FETs) and (2) device lifetimes improved by approximately 100 times to exceed 10 years with respect to both ON- and OFF-state hot-carried reliability for n-FETs as well as TDDB together with unchanged p-FET hot-carrier reliability, all under 3.3-V operation.<
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