Impacts of NBTI and hot-carrier stress on silicon nanowire transistor characteristics

Abstract

Following the downscaling road map for planar metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors, non-planar (three-dimensional) multiple-gate architectures are becoming essential for the ultimate scaling of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor devices. Gate-all-around (nanowire) field-effect transistors have proven to be the most suitable below-22 nm technology nodes. Hence the reliability of these devices is of great concern. Negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI) and hot-carrier degradation (HCD) are the key device reliability issues that exhibit some different features at nanoscale. In this work, the NBTI reliability issues of p-channel gate-all-around silicon nanowire transistors (SNWTs) under direct-current and alternating-current stress were investigated. When stressed, the NBTI behavior in SNWTs showed fast initial degradation, quick degradation saturation and then a special recovery behavior. Along with that, the effects of hot-carrier stress on n-channel SNWTs were studied. Due to the surrounded gate structure, it was observed that the effects of HCD were significant in the nanowire transistors.