On the temperature behavior of hot-carrier degradation

We show that - in contrast to previous findings - hot-carrier degradation (HCD) in scaled nMOSFETs with a channel length of 44 nm appears to be weaker at elevated temperatures. However, the distance between degradation traces obtained at 25 and 75° C reduces as the stress voltages increase and at a certain voltage the changes of the linear drain current measured at 25 and 75° C are almost identical in the entire stress time window. We apply our physics-based model for hot-carrier degradation to analyze the temperature behavior of this detrimental phenomenon. This behavior is interpreted in terms of competing single- and multiple-carrier processes of Si-H bond dissociation with the corresponding rates having the opposite temperature dependencies. One of the most important aspects relevant to the temperature behavior of HCD is the bond vibrational life-time which decreases with the temperature.