Excess hot-carrier currents in SOI MOSFETs and its implications

This work demonstrates that excess hot-carrier currents in SOI MOSFETs are caused by self-heating. Self-heating-free I/sub SUB/ data should be used for dynamic lifetime extrapolation due to long thermal time constant. The underlying mechanism, increased impact ionization with temperature at low drain bias, is studied experimentally from the angle of thermal activation energy. Our study indicates that the driving force of impact ionization transitions from the electric field to the lattice temperature with power-supply scaling below 1.2 V.