Study of charge carrier quantization in strained Si-nMOSFETs

In this paper, the size quantization of the electron gas in the channel of a strained Si-MOSFET is investigated based on the Schrödinger equation and density gradient model, which is widely used in commercial TCAD software. Since the results of the density gradient model based on standard parameters found in the literature strongly deviate from the more fundamental Schrödinger equation, a new parameter model has been developed for strained Si. The improved density gradient model yields good results for a wide range of strain, temperature, and doping concentrations in the Si layer.