SOI MOSFET with an insulator region (IR-SOI): A novel device for reliable nanoscale CMOS circuits

Device performance in the electronic circuits degrades with elapsed time. Therefore it is important to design a new device to have a reliable performance. In this paper, we present the unique features exhibited by a novel nanoscale silicon-on-insulator (SOI) metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) in which the silicon active layer consists of an insulator region (IR-SOI). The high-K dielectric HfO₂ as an insulator material is located in the silicon active layer and drain region. Our simulation results demonstrate that this leads to improve the hot electron reliability of the IR-SOI in comparison with the conventional SOI-MOSFET (C-SOI). The insulator region HfO₂ considerably decreases the electric field in the channel and drain regions. Therefore, the degradation mechanism in the proposed structure is lower than that in the C-SOI structure because of reduction of hot carrier effect (HCE). Also using two-dimensional and two-carrier device simulation, we have investigated the improvement in device performance focusing on the HCE, off current, gate current and gate induced drain leakage (GIDL) which can effect on the reliability of the CMOS devices.