Uniaxial and/or Biaxial Strain Influence on MuGFET Devices

In this work, the impact of global and/or local strain engineering techniques on tri-gate p- and nMuGFETs performance is experimentally evaluated. Multiple gate structures were analyzed through basic and analog performance parameters for four different splits processed with different strain-engineering techniques (unstrained, uniaxial, biaxial and uniaxial+biaxial stress). While n-channel devices with narrow fins present a worse analog behavior, biaxial stress promotes the electron mobility for larger devices increasing the voltage gain. Besides the voltage gain, the transconductance, output conductance and Early Voltage are also evaluated. Although pMuGFETs are less affected by the strain engineering, they present better analog behavior for all studied devices.

An analytic method to compute the stress dependence on the dimensions and its influence in the characteristics of triple gate devices

Triple-gate devices are considered a promising solution for sub-20 nm era. Strain engineering has also been recognized as an alternative due to the increase in the carriers mobility it propitiates. The simulation of strained devices has the major drawback of the stress non-uniformity, which cannot be easily considered in a device TCAD simulation without the coupled process simulation that is time consuming and cumbersome task. However, it is mandatory to have accurate device simulation, with good correlation with experimental results of strained devices, allowing for in-depth physical insight as well as prediction on the stress impact on the device electrical characteristics. This work proposes the use of an analytic function, based on the literature, to describe accurately the strain dependence on both channel length and fin width in order to simulate adequately strained triple-gate devices. The maximum transconductance and the threshold voltage are used as the key parameters to compare simulated and experimental data. The results show the agreement of the proposed analytic function with the experimental results. Also, an analysis on the threshold voltage variation is carried out, showing that the stress affects the dependence of the threshold voltage on the temperature. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.