Hot-carrier-reliability design guidelines for CMOS logic circuits

Author

Quader, Khandker N. ; Minami, Eric R. ; Wei-Jen Ko ; Ko, Ping K. ; Hu, Chenming

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

29

Issue

3

fYear

1994

fDate

3/1/1994 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

253

Lastpage

262

Abstract

Long-term ring-oscillator hot-carrier degradation data and simulation results are compared to demonstrate that a circuit reliability simulator BERT can predict CMOS digital circuit speed degradation from transistor DC stress data. We present generalized hot-carrier-reliability design rules that translate device-level degradation rate to CMOS circuit lifetime. The design rules, which consist of lifetime and speed degradation factors, can roughly predict CMOS circuit degradation during the initial design, and can help reliability engineers to quickly estimate the overall product hot-carrier reliability. The NMOSFET and PMOSFET lifetime factors were found to obey 4/ft_rise and 10/ft_fall respectively. Typically, the NMOSFET and PMOSFET speed degradation factors are 1/4 and 1/2, respectively, with saturation region drain current as the monitor, while for a 100 MHz operating frequency and for an input rise time of 0.35 ns, the NMOSFET and PMOSFET time factors are 120 and 300, respectively

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; circuit analysis computing; circuit reliability; hot carriers; integrated logic circuits; logic design; 0.35 ns; 100 MHz; BERT; CMOS circuit lifetime; CMOS logic circuits; NMOSFET; PMOSFET; circuit reliability simulator; design guidelines; design rules; digital circuit speed degradation; hot carrier reliability; long-term hot-carrier degradation data; ring-oscillator; saturation region drain current; transistor DC stress data; Bit error rate; CMOS digital integrated circuits; CMOS logic circuits; Circuit simulation; Degradation; Digital circuits; Guidelines; Hot carriers; MOSFET circuits; Predictive models;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.278346

Filename

278346