Solid-State Electronics, Vol.51, No.11-12, 1458-1465, 2007
Experimental evidence and extraction of the electron mass variation in [110] uniaxially strained MOSFETs
In this paper, we investigate electron mobility enhancement in [110] uniaxially strained nMOSFETs with three different channel orientations on a [001] Si substrate. We have experimentally demonstrated that, for stress applied in a [110] direction, electrical results cannot be explained without considering that the in-plane mass in, for the [001] two-fold valleys (Delta 2) becomes anisotropic and varies with strain. For the first time, their values in the transport direction, perpendicular and parallel to an applied stress, have been extracted from electrical characterization of the MOS transistor thanks to an original technique. It has been found that the conduction mass of Delta 2 along the standard [110] channel direction is reduced by a tensile uniaxial stress along [110] while it is increased by a tensile uniaxial stress along [(1) over bar 10]. These results reinforce several previous theoretical works. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.