Hot-carrier reliability and breakdown characteristics of multi-finger RF MOS transistors

Hot-carrier reliability and drain breakdown characteristics of multi-finger short channel MOS transistors are studied in detail. Several abnormal characteristics were observed. With the aid of numerical simulation, we found that the shared drain and source regions for adjacent gate fingers can lead to current crowding and result in the finger number-dependent current-voltage characteristics. In addition, the high current density spots near the drain region would result in the significant hot-carrier induced transconductance degradation as well as remarkable drain breakdown voltage lowering.