Comparison of Measurement Techniques for Gate Shortening in Sub-Micrometer Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors

Abstract

In this paper, various methods of evaluating the electrical channel length change (or gate shortening) as a result of applied gate voltage in sub-micrometer metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) are investigated and the method best suited for such short channel length devices is reported. Studies were performed on n-channel transistors (n-MOSFETs) fabricated using X-ray and optical lithography and having channel lengths in the range of 0.4 to 4 µm and 1.5 to 10 µm respectively. The effective channel lengths were extracted from the current-voltage (I-V) measurements. The measurements were made for different low and high sets of gate voltages. In comparing various methods it was found that the method due to Terada and Muta, and Chern et al. gave accurate results consistently for short channel MOSFETs, whereas the Whitfield method gave accurate results only for larger channel length MOSFETs. The accuracy of the Whitfield method is sensitive to applied gate voltage during I-V measurements. The Peng and Afromowitz method is unsuitable for finding the effective channel length of sub-micrometer MOSFETs especially if the MOSFETs have high values of external resistance.