Impact ionization and distribution functions in sub-micron nMOSFET technologies

The physics of impact ionization generated substrate current in 0.1 μm nMOSFET's technologies is clarified by comparison of experiment and full-band Monte Carlo (MC) simulation for a wide range of biases. Quasiballistic transport is confirmed. It is shown for the first time that these devices allow extraction of ionization probabilities near threshold from substrate current measurements.