We present the improvement of hot-carrier-reliability by deuterium annealing at the temperatures ranging from 430 to 460 degreesC in the case of CMOS transistors of the design rule of 0.13 mum. By means of secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and ESR measurements, we confirm that this improvement is caused by the termination of the interface defects by deuterium atoms. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.