Performance and hot-carrier reliability of 100 nm channel length jet vapor deposited Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ MNSFETs

Metal-nitride-semiconductor FETs (MNSFETs) having channel lengths down to 100 mm and a novel jet vapor deposited (JVD) Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ gate dielectric have been fabricated and characterized. When compared with MOSFETs having a thermal SiO/sub 2/ gate insulator, the MNSFETs show a comparable drain current drive, transconductance, subthreshold slope and pre-stress interface quality. A novel charge pumping technique is employed to characterize the hot-carrier induced interface-trap generation in MNSFETs and MOSFETs. Under identical substrate current during stress, MNSFETs show less interface-state generation and drain current degradation, for various channel lengths, stress times and supply voltages, despite the fact that the Si-Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ barrier (2.1 eV) is lower than the Si-SiO/sub 2/ barrier (3.1 eV). The time and voltage dependence of hot-carrier degradation has been found to be distinctly different for MNSFETs compared to SiO/sub 2/ MOSFETs.