Effect of NBTI degradation on transistor variability in advanced technologies

The effect of PMOS Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) on product performance is a concern. As technology scales and device dimension shrinks, the trend in the Vt-variability at both time zero and after NBTI aging increases. The timeO Vt- variability can be explained by the random nature of dopants, whereas the randomly generated defects in the gate oxide can account for the device aging-induced variability. This paper focuses on the NBTI-induced device Vt-variability and trend across technology generations. The remarkable correlation of aging-induced Vt-variability to the gate oxide area suggests that the geometry scaling is the dominant component that drives the increased trend in aging-induced variability.