Criticisms on and comparison of experimental channel backscattering extraction methods

Abstract

In this paper we critically review and compare experimental methods, based on the Lundstrom model, to extract the channel backscattering ratio in nano MOSFETs. Basically two experimental methods are currently used, the most common of them is based on the measurement of the saturation drain current at different temperatures. We show that this method is affected by very poor assumptions and that the extracted backscattering ratio strongly underestimates its actual value posing particular attention to the backscattering actually extracted in nano devices. The second method is based on the direct measurement of the inversion charge by CV characteristics and gets closer to the physics of the backscattering model. We show, through measurements in high mobility p-germanium devices, how the temperature-based method gives the same result of the CV-based method once that its approximations are removed. Moreover we show that the CV-based method uses a number of approximations which are partially inconsistent with the model. In particular we show, with the aid of 2D quantum corrected device simulations, that the value of the barrier lowering obtained through the CV-based method is totally inconsistent with the barrier lowering used to correct the inversion charge and that the extracted saturation inversion charge is underestimated.