Impact of the displacement damage in channel and source/drain regions on the DC characteristics degradation in deep-submicron MOSFETs after heavy ion irradiation

This paper mainly reports the permanent impact of displacement damage induced by heavy-ion strikes on the deep-submicron MOSFETs. Upon the heavy ion track through the device, it can lead to displacement damage, including the vacancies and the interstitials. As the featured size of device scales down, the damage can change the dopant distribution in the channel and source/drain regions through the generation of radiation-induced defects and thus have significant impacts on their electrical characteristics. The measured results show that the radiation-induced damage can cause DC characteristics degradations including the threshold voltage, subthreshold swing, saturation drain current, transconductance, etc. The radiation-induced displacement damage may become the dominant issue while it was the secondary concern for the traditional devices after the heavy ion irradiation. The samples are also irradiated by Co-60 gamma ray for comparison with the heavy ion irradiation results. Corresponding explanations and analysis are discussed.