Efficient 3D Monte Carlo Simulation of Orientation and Stress Effects in FinFETs

The stress and orientation dependence of FinFET performance is studied by parallelized 3D Monte Carlo (MC) device simulation. The long-channel mobility for holes in devices with < 110 >/< 110 > sidewall/channel orientation was found to double relative to the < 100 >/< 100 > configuration; electron mobility decreased by 20%. This agrees with recent measurements. In 15nm-FinFETs quasi-ballistic velocity overshoot is strongly enhanced by mechanical stress, leading to more than 10% increase in the on-current (ION). The wallclock time for computing ION with about one percent statistical error is less than ten minutes with 16 threads making MC viable for standard TCAD applications.