Effects of Hot Carriers on DC and RF Performances of Deep Submicron p-Channel Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors with Various Oxide Layer Thicknesses

In this work, the effects of hot carriers on the DC and RF performances of 45 nm p-channel metal?oxide?semiconductor field-effect transistors (PMOSFETs) with various oxide layer thicknesses were investigated in detail by RF automatic measurements. It was found that a PMOSFET with a thinner oxide layer suffers more serious damage from hot carriers than that with a thicker oxide layer. Also, the greatest degradation occurs at the bias condition when gate stress voltage Vgstr is equal to drain stress voltage Vdstr, and it was found that the degradation of the cutoff frequency fT is dependent on transconductance gm only. This is different from conventional long-channel devices, in which the greatest degradation takes place at Vgstr = Vdstr/2 and when fT is dependent on both gm and the total gate capacitance Cgg (=Cgs+Cgd).