Comparison of the Total Dose Responses of Fully Depleted SOI nMOSFETs With Different Geometries for the Worst Case Bias Conditions

Fully depleted (FD) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) nMOSFETs fabricated using 0.2-μm SOI technology with external body contact (EBC) and floating body (FB) structures are irradiated up to 500 krad(Si) using 60Co gamma rays under the transmission gate (TG) and OFF bias conditions, respectively. The threshold voltage shift of the back transistors due to radiation-induced charge trapping in the buried oxide (BOX) is used to characterize the total dose response of irradiated back transistors. The results indicate that, overall, the TG biased EBC transistors with various gate lengths are more sensitive to the total dose radiation than the OFF biased FB counterparts at low dose levels. Furthermore, for the shorter gate transistors with a supply voltage of 1.8 V, a relatively complex correlation exists between the total dose response and the gate length. In particular, the back transistor of the TG biased 0.20-μm 1.8-V EBC transistor reveals smaller threshold voltage shifts than the OFF biased counterpart at approximately 500 krad(Si) because of the saturation of its threshold shift with increased doses, and a similar radiation response is observed for the TG biased 0.35-μm EBC transistor with a supply voltage of 2.5 V. We found that the 2.5-V back transistors exhibited greater radiation hardness than the 1.8-V counterparts with the same bias configuration in most cases.