Random Interface-Traps-Induced Electrical Characteristic Fluctuation in 16-nm-Gate High-κ/Metal Gate Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Device and Inverter Circuit

Abstract

This work estimates electrical and transfer-characteristic fluctuations in 16-nm-gate high-κ/metal gate (HKMG) metal–oxide–semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) devices and inverter circuit induced by random interface traps (ITs) at high-κ/silicon interface. Randomly generated devices with two-dimensional (2D) ITs at HfO2/Si interface are incorporated into quantum-mechanically corrected 3D device simulation. Device characteristics, as influenced by different degrees of fluctuation, are discussed in relation to random ITs near source and drain ends. Owing to a decreasing penetration of electric field from drain to source, the drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) of the edvice decreases when the number of ITs increases. In contrast to random-dopant fluctuation, the screening effect of device's inversion layer cannot effectively screen potential's variation; thus, devices still have noticeable fluctuation of gate capacitance (CG) under high gate bias. The cutoff frequency decreases as increasing the number of ITs owing to the decreasing transconductance and increasing CG. Decreasing on-state current and increasing CG further result in increasing intrinsic gate delay time (τ) when the number of ITs increases. The fluctuation magnitude of DIBL, cutoff frequency, and τ above is increased as the number of ITs increases. Even for cases with the same number of random ITs, noise margins (NMs) of the 16-nm-gate complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor inverter circuit are still quite different due to the different distribution of random ITs. The NMs of inverter circuit increase as the number of random ITs increases; however, the NMs' fluctuations are increased due to the more sources of fluctuation at HfO2/Si interface of HKMG devices.