Effect of high-energy neutrons on MuGFETs

This paper investigates, for the first time, the influence of high-energy neutrons on Multiple-Gate FETs (MuGFETs) with various gate lengths and fin widths. Neutron-induced degradation is addressed through the variation of major device parameters such as threshold voltage, subthreshold slope, maximum transconductance and DIBL. We demonstrate that high-energy neutrons result in total-dose effects largely similar to those caused by γ- and proton-irradiations. It is shown that, contrarily to the generally-believed immunity to irradiation, very short-channel MuGFETs can become extremely sensitive to the total-dose effect. The possible reasons of such length-dependent neutron-induced degradation are discussed and finally related to gate edges.