ABSTRACT
Hydrogen-related degradation by hot electrons in MOS transistors has been long known and is well documented.1 It has recently been discovered that the degradation exhibits a giant isotope effect if hydrogen is substituted by deuterium.2-4 The isotope effect can delay the channel hot-electron degradation by factors of 10 to 100 and, with the current definition of lifetime, even much beyond that. It therefore must be an effect different to the known kinetic isotope effect and the standard changes in reaction velocity of a factor of three or so when hydrogen is substituted by deuterium.
