Impact of Gate-Induced Strain on MuGFET Reliability

Hot carrier injection (HCI) reliability and negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) of multiple-gate field-effect transistors (MuGFETs) with highly tensile metal gate electrodes were investigated. The results were compared with those from control devices with poly-Si gate electrodes. It was found that gate strain boosts performance without any detrimental effect on HCI or NBTI reliability, indicating MuGFET compatibility with strained silicon technology. The impact of fin width ( W fin ) scaling was also investigated. HCI reliability improves with W fin scaling, whereas NBTI reliability degrades with W fin scaling. The same W fin scaling trends were observed in both strained and unstrained devices.