Impact of velocity saturation region on nMOSFET's hot carrier reliability at elevated temperatures

An anomalous behavior of nMOSFET's hot carrier reliability characteristics has been investigated at an elevated temperature for the first time. Although the degradation of linear drain current is significantly reduced with increasing stress temperature, the degradation of saturation drain current is enhanced for high temperature stress. This behavior can be explained by the reduction of the velocity saturation length at an elevated temperature, which increases the net amount of interface states that can influence the channel current. This anomalous behavior causes a significant impact on the device reliability for future deep submicron devices at high operating temperatures.