Hot Carrier Reliability of Strained N-Mosfet with Lattice Mismatched Source/Drain Stressors

The hot carrier reliability of a novel uniaxial tensile strained n-channel transistor with silicon-carbon (Si₁ -_yC_y) source and drain (S/D) regions is investigated for the first time. Strained n-FETs show reduced hot carrier lifetime than the control n-FETs when stressed at comparable I_sub/I_d ratio. Worst case hot carrier stressing is observed to occur at maximum substrate current I_sub condition which leads to a higher drive current I_Dsat degradation as compared to the V_GS = V_GS stress. At nominal operating voltages, the strained n-FET is projected to have a hot carrier lifetime well exceeding the 10-years requirement, showing no severe reliability issues.