The Hot Carrier (HC) reliability of NMOS transistors fabricated on biaxially tensile-strain SOI substrates (sSOI) is compared to that of devices fabricated on standard unstrained SOI substrates. It is shown that sSOI-based devices not only exhibit a 10% higher performance in term of I-ON/I-OFF but also show superior HC reliability at same drive current. This reliability improvement may be explained by a better interface quality for sSOI films. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.