Competing AC hot-carrier degradation mechanisms in surface-channel p-MOSFETs during pass transistor operation

The hot-carrier reliability of deep-submicrometer surface-channel pMOSFETs presents more severe limitations than the usual electron-trapping-induced channel shortening. New degradation mechanisms are found during AC pass transistor degradations whereby the electron trapping is quickly suppressed by the subsequent detrapping phases leading to the strong influence of donor-type interface traps which reduce the transistor performances as in the case of n-MOSFETs. This effect becomes more pronounced in thin gate-oxide (7 nm) and shows a large dependence with the propagation delay which is partly due to the lower sensitivity to negative trapped charge in thin oxides and due to the increasing proportion of the detrapped charges and of the generated interface traps.