A study of inverse narrow width effect of 65nm low power CMOS technology

In this paper, we present the investigation of inverse narrow width effect (INWE) of 65 nm low-power process with dual gate oxide shapes. To evaluate the impact of STI process on narrow devices, we conducted different experiments in STI process steps, including STI liner, STI elevation, STI liner annealing and STI nitride pullback. The result shows only STI liner annealing and STI nitride pullback have impact on the INWE of MOSFETs. Different gate oxidation methods are also experimented. It is found that gate oxidation process gives a strong impact on the mobility of narrow width devices and makes narrow width transistors behavior significantly different.