Suppression of hot-carrier Degradation Si MOSFETs by germanium doping.

Presently there are two approaches to reduce hot-carrier effects in Si MOSFETs, namely the use of LDD/DDD structures and the reduction of applied bias. Both of these suffer certain penalties. This letter introduces a novel technique which incorporates Ge impurities in the channel to create scattering such that "lucky" hot-carriers are less probable. Results indicate that while the initial MOSFET characteristics are maintained, the degradation rate under voltage stress is much reduced.