In this paper, the effect of hot carrier injection on an n-bulk fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is analyzed. The hot carrier injection method is applied to determine the performance change after injection in two ways, channel hot electron (CHE) and drain avalanche hot carrier (DAHC), which have the greatest effect at room temperature. The optimum condition for CHE injection is V_G=V_D, and the optimal condition for DAHC injection can be indirectly confirmed by measuring the peak value of the substrate current. Deterioration by DAHC injection affects not only hot electrons formed by impact ionization, but also hot holes, which has a greater impact on reliability than CHE. Further, we test the amount of drain voltage that can be withstood, and extracted the lifetime of the device. Under CHE injection conditions, the drain voltage was able to maintain a lifetime of more than 10 years at a maximum of 1.25 V, while DAHC was able to achieve a lifetime exceeding 10 years at a 1.05-V drain voltage, which is 0.2 V lower than that of CHE injection conditions.

Graphene has a monolayer crystal structure formed with C-atoms and has been used as a base layer of HETs (hot electron transistors). Graphene HETs have exhibited the operation at THz frequencies and higher current on/off ratio than that of Graphene FETs. In this article, we report on the preliminary results of current characteristics from the HETs which are fabricated utilizing highly doped Si collector, graphene base, and 5 nm thin Al2O3 tunnel layers between the base and Ti emitter. We have observed E-B forward currents are inherited to tunneling through Al2O3 layers, but have not noticed the Schottky barrier blocking effect on B-C forward current at the base/collector interface. At the common-emitter configuration, under a constant VBE between,0~1.2V, Ic has increased linearly with VCE forVCE＜VCE indicating the saturation region. As the VCE increases further, a plateau of Ic vs. VCE has appeared slightly at VCE-VBE, denoting forward-active region. With further increase of, has kept increasing probably due to tunneling through thin Schottky barrier between B/C. Thus the current on/off ration has exhibited to be 50. To improve hot electron effects, we propose the usage of low doped Si substrate, insertion of barrier layer between B/C, or substrates with low electron affinity.

In this study, a substrate-bias assisted 2-step pulse programming method is proposed for realizing 4-bit/1-cell operation of the SONOS memory. The programming voltage and time are considerably reduced by this programming method than a gate-bias assisted 2-step pulse programming method and CHEI method. It is confirmed that the difference of 4-states in the threshold voltage is maintained to more than 0.5 V at least for 10-year for the multi-level characteristics.