Channel hot-electron degradation on 60-nm HfO2-gated nMOSFET DC and RF performances

Channel hot-carrier-induced dc and RF performance degradations in 60-nm high-k nMOSFETs are examined experimentally. RF performances such as the cutoff frequency, noise figure, linearity, and flicker noise of high-k MOSFETs show significant vulnerability to the hot-electron effect. Analytical equations for normalized RF degradations relating to the device dc and ac parameters are derived. Good agreement between the analytical predictions and experimental data is obtained. The accuracy of the model equations suggests fast and effective evaluation of noise figure and linearity degradations using simple dc and ac parameters directly.