Abstract
In 1980, hot carrier instability (HCI) is the main problem of reliability in semiconductor industry. With the proposition of the Lucky Electron Model (LEM), the behavior of HC was well explained. However, based on LEM we expect that HCI will be unimportant for devices with low operating voltage. In this thesis, hot carrier effects on VDD less than 1.5V devices were studied. From experiments, it is clear that HCI prevails for short channel N-FinFET with operating below 1.5V. Some observations are consistent with long channel planar MOSFETs. Such as, VTH and SS are worse in reverse IDVG sweep, which means the induced traps mostly located on the drain side. The time exponents of hot carrier degradation are higher than 0.3. However, there some observations are completely different. The bias conditions of maximum substrate current shift from VG=0.5VD to VG=VD even VG>VD. Devices degrade more severe in higher temperature.