In this paper an experimental study of the scalability of a gate/N- overlap
ped lightly doped drain (OL-LDD) structure in the deep-submicrometer regime
is presented. Devices were optimized for processes with a design rule down
to 0.15 mu m. The allowable power supply voltage is obtained by investigat
ing the time-dependent dielectric breakdown reliability, the minimum operat
ing voltage, the gate-induced-drain-leakage current, the drain-induced-barr
ier-lowering effect and the DC hot carrier reliability. It was found that t
he maximum allowable supply voltage is mainly limited by the DC hot carrier
reliability even in the deep-submicrometer range. A higher current-driving
ability in the OL-LDD structure is achieved in comparison to that in a sin
gle drain (SD) structure when V-Dmax is applied as a supply voltage. The OL
-LDD structure has a smaller C-GD in the inversion region as well as in the
accumulated region, as compared with the SD structure, especially with sma
ller L-G. Consequently, the performance of complementary metal-oxide-semico
nductor (CMOS) devices with the OL-LDD structure is superior to that with t
he SD structure in the deep-submicrometer regime. It is also confirmed that
the OL-LDD structure has a scaling merit even for 0.15 mu m CMOS devices.