Improved hot-electron reliability in strained-Si nMOS

Abstract

Strained-Si/relaxed-Si1-χGe χ structures provide a viable means of improving CMOS performance. For nMOS devices, the tensile strain in pseudomorphic Si on relaxed-Si1-χ Geχ splits the six-fold degeneracy of the conduction band minimum, rendering increased electron mobility due to a lower in-plane effective mass and reduced intervalley scattering. In this paper, in addition to confirming enhanced performance for biaxial-strained-Si nMOS, we present hot-electron degradation characteristics for the first time, showing improvement over bulk Si. © 2004 IEEE.