A study of hot-carrier degradation in n- and p-MOSFETs with ultra-thin gate oxides in the direct-tunneling regime

Hot-carrier degradation in the direct-tunneling regime of the gate oxide was investigated under a wide range of conditions such as stress bias, oxide thickness, gate length, and channel-type dependencies for the first time. It was confirmed that n-MOSFETs with thinner gate oxides have higher hot-carrier reliability in the direct-tunneling regime from 1.5 nm to 3.8 nm. For p-MOSFETs, little degradation was observed under all conditions of stress bias, oxide thickness, and gate length. These results indicate that ultra-thin gate oxides in the direct-tunneling regime have extremely high hot-carrier reliability.