Investigation of Hot-Carrier Stress Effect on High-Frequency Performance of Laterally Diffused Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Transistors

Abstract

The hot-carrier stress effects on the high-frequency performance characteristics of laterally diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor (LDMOS) transistors were investigated. A constant bias channel hot-carrier stress was applied at room temperature. After applying 3 h of hot-carrier stress, the on-resistance and saturation drain current degradations are 18 and 9%, respectively. However, the degradations of the cutoff frequency and maximum oscillation frequency were less than 2% when the devices were biased before the onset of quasi-saturation. In addition, we found that the degradations of high-frequency parameters are not related to the change in transconductance but to the changes in gate capacitances. Finally, S-parameter variations under hot-carrier stress were also examined in this study. The observations of S-parameter variations are important for RF power amplifier design. (C) 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics