Managing stress helps transistor performance
Tuesday, May 16, 2017 - 10:32
in Physics & Chemistry
Tensile mechanical stress can have a useful effect for some transistors, where the resulting atomic strain allows its current-carrying electron-hole pairs better mobility. However, when that stress is applied to the whole device, as is a popular approach via use of what's called contact etching stop layers (CESLs), the drift region adjacent to the stretched channel is compressed and results in reduced performance.