RF performance degradation in nMOS transistors due to hot carrier effects

This paper reports the hot electron induced RF performance degradation in multifinger gate nMOS transistors within the general frame work of the degradation mechanism. The RF performance degradation of hot-carrier stressed nMOS transistors can be explained by the transconductance degradation, which is resulted from the interface state generation. It has been found that the pr performance degradation, especially minimum noise figure degradation, is more significant than de performance degradation. From the experimental correlation between RF and de performance degradation, RF performance degradation can be predicted just by the measurement of de performance degradation or the initial substrate current. From our experimental results, hot electron induced RF performance degradation should be taken into consideration in the design of the CMOS RF integrated circuits.