Hot-carrier-induced degradation of partially depleted SOI CMOSFETs was investigated with respect to body-contact (BC-SOI) and floating-body (FB-SOI) for channel lengths ranging from 0.25 down to 0.1 /spl mu/m with 2 nm gate oxide. It is found that the valence-band electron tunneling is the main factor of device degradation for the SOI CMOSFET. In the FB-SOI nMOSFET, both the floating body effect (FBE) and the parasitic bipolar transistor effect (PBT) affect the hot-carrier-induced degradation of device characteristics. Without apparent FBE on pMOSFET, the worst hot-carrier stress condition of the 0.1 /spl mu/m FB-SOI pMOSFET is similar to that of the 0.1 /spl mu/m BC-SOI pMOSFET.