Substrate dependent mobility and strain effects for silicon and SiGe transistor channels with HKMG first stacks

•The (1 0 0)/〈1 1 0〉 channel direction is more stress sensitive for both N- and PMOS.•For high performance application the (1 0 0)/〈1 1 0〉 channel orientation is optimal.•For low-cost and low-power technologies the (1 0 0)/〈1 0 0〉 orientation is suitable.

The impact of compressive and tensile stress on CMOS performance of high-k/metal-gate (HKMG) transistors is studied for 〈1 0 0〉 and 〈1 1 0〉 oriented silicon and SiGe channels. The (1 0 0)/〈1 1 0〉 channel direction is found to be more stress sensitive for both N- and PMOS whereas the (1 0 0)/〈1 0 0〉 oriented transistor has a higher initial hole mobility. These results recommend to use the (1 0 0)/〈1 1 0〉 channel orientation for high performance application due to the high drive current gain and (1 0 0)/〈1 0 0〉 channel orientation for low power/low cost applications where no stress elements are included to ease the overall process complexity and to decrease costs. SOC level test design implementations show consistent yield as well as improved performance.