We investigate the performance of strained silicon directly on insulator for short and narrow fully depleted strained silicon on insulator (FD-sSOI) CMOS transistors with a TiN/HfO2 gate stack in two different orientations. Through electrical characterization of these devices versus the geometry and for different wafers (with different strain levels), a mobility enhancement and low short and narrow channel effects are put in evidence. Moreover, elastic mechanical simulations, based on Hooke's law, are performed in order to understand the carriers' sensitivity to strain and to MESA induced stress relaxation. Finally, a specific method of channel separation is presented in order to find both the lateral and the front contributions on the carrier transport properties of these c-MOSFETs. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.