High-K/Metal Gate Technology: A New Horizon

High-K/metal gate technology represents a fundamental change in transistor structure that restarts gate length scaling, enables performance improvement and offers chip power reduction. The gate stack presented is compatible with conventional high temperature CMOS processing and existing performance enhancement elements. A new knob in the form of metal gate work function promises separate and better optimization for high performance and low power applications. This technology introduces a unique PBTI reliability mechanism for N-FET that is now well understood and modeled.