New experimental findings on hot-carrier-induced degradation in lateral DMOS transistors

This paper presents new experimental findings on the hot-carrier-induced degradation in lateral DMOS with different gate oxide thickness and when it is stressed at elevated temperature. For thin oxide devices, the generation of interface states and the trapped holes are the causes of the reduction of IDS in the linear region and the increase of IDSAT in the saturation region, respectively. For thick oxide devices, the generation of interface states plays a dominant role for the reduction of IDS in both linear and saturation region. It is observed that the breakdown voltage of both thin and thick oxide devices is increased and the device degradation is reduced at elevated stress temperature.