Mobility Investigations on Strained 30-nm High-k Metal Gate MOSFETs by Geometrical Magnetoresistance Effect

In this paper, we present mobility investigations of strained nMOS and pMOS short-channel transistors with dimensions down to 30-nm gate length. Using the geometrical magnetoresistance (MR) effect, carrier mobility of electrons and holes in the inversion channel of a recent state-of-the-art CMOS technology is presented from linear to saturation operation conditions. The MR effect allows for a more direct access to the carrier mobility compared with the conventional current/voltage and capacitance/voltage mobility derivation methods, in which series resistance, inversion charge density, and effective channel length are necessary to extract the mobility values of the short-channel devices. In another way, the MR effect can help to disentangle the performance gain of the strained state-of-the art devices to changes in channel mobility or device connection, e.g., series resistance effects.