Understanding and Modeling the Temperature Behavior of Hot-Carrier Degradation in SiON nMOSFETs

Using our physics-based model for hot-carrier degradation (HCD), we analyze the temperature behavior of HCD in nMOSFETs with a channel length of 44 nm. It was observed that, contrary to most previous findings, the linear drain current change (AId,lin) measured during hot-carrier stress in these devices appears to be lower at higher temperatures. However, the difference between the AId,lin values obtained at different temperatures decreases as the stress voltage increases. This trend is attributed to the single-carrier process of Si-H bond rupture, which is enhanced by the electron-electron scattering. We also consider another important modeling aspect, namely, the vibrational life-time of the Si-H bond, which also depends on the temperature. We finally show that our HCD model can successfully capture the temperature behavior of HCD with physically reasonable parameters.