Impacts of additive uniaxial strain on hole mobility in bulk Si and strained-Si p-MOSFETs

Hole mobility changes under uniaxial and combinational stress in different directions are characterized and analyzed by applying additive mechanical uniaxial stress to bulk Si and SiGe-virtual-substrate-induced strained- Si(s-Si)p-MOSFETs(metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors)along 110 and 100 channel directions. In bulk Si,a mobility enhancement peak is found under uniaxial compressive strain in the low vertical field.The combination of 100 direction uniaxial tensile strain and substrate-induced biaxial tensile strain provides a higher mobility relative to the 110 direction,opposite to the situation in bulk Si.But the combinational strain experiences a gain loss at high field,which means that uniaxial compressive strain may still be a better choice.The mobility enhancement of SiGe-induced strained p-MOSFETs along the 110 direction under additive uniaxial tension is explained by the competition between biaxial and shear stress.