Quantifying Self-Heating Effects in Strained Si MOSFETs with Scaling

Abstract

This paper presents the first demonstration and quantification of the reduced self-heating effects in deep submicron n-MOSFETs on thin strain relaxed buffers (SRB), through the application of the ac conductance technique. Strained Si devices demonstrate a peak enhancement in on-state drain current, Ion ~30 %, with this figure falling to 6 % at smaller gate lengths. After applying the ac conductance technique the 30 % enhancement remains almost constant across the range of gate lengths. These results prove that the previously known trend of reduced enhancement with device scaling in strained Si devices on SRBs was largely due to self-heating effects. Comparison of the self-heating effects in SOI and Si0.8Ge0.2 SRBs reveal the potential for thin SRBs as a viable performance booster into the deep sub-micron regime.