Effectiveness of Repairing Hot Carrier Degradation in Si p-FinFETs Using Gate Induced Drain Leakage

In this study, the gate induced drain leakage (GIDL) of Si p-FinFET and its recovery effect on hot carrier degradation (HCD) were experimentally studied to further its physical understanding. It’s found that HCD recovery by GIDL is more closely related to the electric field assisted discharging from oxide traps than the thermal activation. By increasing the GIDL bias, a HCD recovery ratio of up to 80% can be achieved; however, combining GIDL with an increase in environmental temperature from 75 °C to 150 °C cannot further improve the HCD recovery ratio. As the GIDL bias increases, an extraordinary interface state generation and electron injection can be observed, which responds to the remaining HCD and over-repairs the oxide trap related to the HCD. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the recovery effect of GIDL on long-term HCD was verified by comparison with HCD/GIDL and HCD/relaxation cycling experiments.