Congratulations to Ghoneim on his 10th first
authored journal paper – and this time in IEEE Trans. Elect. Dev.!
Out-of-Plane Strain Effects on Physically Flexible FinFET
CMOS – Mohamed T. Ghoneim, Nasir Alfaraj, Galo A. Torres-Sevilla, Hossain M.
Fahad, and Muhammad M. Hussain
In this paper we presented a comprehensive electrical
performance assessment of hafnium silicate (HfSiOx) high-κ dielectric and
titanium nitride (TiN) metal gate integrated FinFET-based
complementary─metal─oxide semiconductor (CMOS) on flexible silicon-on-insulator
(SOI). The devices were fabricated using state-of-the-art CMOS technology and
then transformed into flexible form by using a CMOS-compatible mask-less deep
reactive-ion etching (DRIE) technique. Mechanical out-of-plane stresses
(compressive and tensile) were applied along and across the transistor channel
lengths through a bending range of 0.5 to 5 cm radii for n-type and p-type
FinFETs. Electrical measurements were carried out before and after bending, and
all bending measurements were taken in the actual flexed (bent) state to avoid
relaxation and stress recovery. Global stress from substrate bending affects
the devices in different ways compared to the well-studied uniaxial/biaxial
localized strain. The global stress is dependent on the type of channel charge
carriers, the orientation of the bending axis, and the physical gate length of
the device. We therefore outline useful insights on the design strategies of
flexible FinFETs in future free-form electronic applications.
We are making steady progress and still feel unheard …