Analog/RF Circuit Design Techniques for Nanometerscale IC Technologies

CMOS evolution introduces several problems in analog design. Gate-leakage mismatch exceeds conventional matching tolerances requiring active cancellation techniques or alternative architectures. One strategy to deal with the use of lower supply voltages is to operate critical parts at higher supply voltages, by exploiting combinations of thin- and thick-oxide transistors. Alternatively, low voltage circuit techniques are successfully developed. In order to benefit from nanometer scale CMOS technology, more functionality is shifted to the digital domain, including parts of the RF circuits. At the same time, analog control for digital and digital control for analog emerges to deal with current and upcoming imperfections

Experimental and simulation study of 1D silicon nanowire transistors using heavily doped channels

The experimental results from 8 nm diameter silicon nanowire junctionless field effect transistors with gate lengths of 150 nm are presented that demonstrate on-currents up to 1.15 mA/m for 1.0 V and 2.52 mA/m for 1.8 V gate overdrive with an off-current set at 100 nA/m. On- to off-current ratios above 108 with a subthreshold slope of 66 mV/dec are demonstrated at 25 oC. Simulations using drift-diffusion which include densitygradient quantum corrections provide excellent agreement with the experimental results. The simulations demonstrate that the present silicon-dioxide gate dielectric only allows the gate to be scaled to 25 nm length before short-channel effects significantly reduce the performance. If high-K dielectrics replace some parts of the silicon dioxide then the technology can be scaled to at least 10 nm gatelength

Impact of randomly distributed dopants on Ω-gate junctionless silicon nanowire transistors

This paper presents experimental and simulation analysis of an Ω-shaped silicon junctionless nanowire field-effect transistor (JL-NWT) with gate lengths of 150 nm and diameter of the Si channel of 8 nm. Our experimental measurements reveal that the ON-currents up to 1.15 mA/μm for 1.0 V and 2.52 mA/μm for the 1.8-V gate overdrive with an OFF-current set at 100 nA/μm. Also, the experiment data reveal more than eight orders of magnitude ON-current to OFF-current ratios and an excellent subthreshold slope of 66 mV/dec recorded at room temperature. The obtained experimental current-voltage characteristics are used as a reference point to calibrate the simulations models used in this paper. Our simulation data show good agreement with the experimental results. All simulations are based on drift-diffusion formalism with activated density gradient quantum corrections. Once the simulations methodology is established, the simulations are calibrated to the experimental data. After this, we have performed statistical numerical experiments of a set of 500 different JL-NWTs. Each device has a unique random distribution of the discrete dopants within the silicon body. From those statistical simulations, we extracted important figures of merit, such as OFF-current and ON-current, subthreshold slope, and voltage threshold. The performed statistical analysis, on samples of those 500 JL-NWTs, shows that the mean ID-VGs characteristic is in excellent agreement with the experimental measurements. Moreover, the mean ID-VGs characteristic reproduces better the subthreshold slope data obtained from the experiment in comparison to the continuous model simulation. Finally, performance predictions for the JL transistor with shorter gate lengths and thinner oxide regions are carried out. Among the simulated JL transistors, the configuration with 25-nm gate length and 2-nm oxide thickness shows the most promising characteristics offering scalable designs

Investigation on Performance Metrics of Nanoscale Multigate MOSFETs towards RF and IC Applications

Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) MOSFETs have been the primary precursor for the CMOS technology since last few decades offering superior device performance in terms of package density, speed, and reduced second order harmonics. Recent trends of investigation have stimulated the interest in Fully Depleted (FD) SOI MOSFET because of their remarkable scalability efficiency. However, some serious issues like short channel effects (SCEs) viz drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL), Vth roll-off, subthreshold slope (SS), and hot carrier effects (HCEs) are observed in nanoscale regime. Numerous advanced structures with various engineering concepts have been addressed to reduce the above mentioned SCEs in SOI platform. Among them strain engineering, high-k gate dielectric with metal gate technology (HKMG), and non-classical multigate technologies are most popular models for enhancement in carrier mobility, suppression of gate leakage current, and better immunization to SCEs. In this thesis, the performance of various emerging device designs are analyzed in nanoscale with 2-D modeling as well as through calibrated TCAD simulation. These attempts are made to reduce certain limitations of nanoscale design and to provide a significant contribution in terms of improved performances of the miniaturized devices. Various MOS parameters like gate work function (_m), channel length (L), channel thickness (tSi), and gate oxide thickness (tox) are optimized for both FD-SOI and Multiple gate technology. As the semiconductor industries migrate towards multigate technology for system-on-chip (SoC), system-in-package (SiP), and internet-of-things (IoT) applications, an appropriate examination of the advanced multiple gate MOFETs is required for the analog/RF application keeping reliability issue in mind. Various non-classical device structures like gate stack engineering and halo doping in the channel are extensively studied for analog/RF applications in double gate (DG) platform. A unique attempt has been made for detailed analysis of the state-of-the-art 3-D FinFET on dependency of process variability. The 3-D architecture is branched as Planar or Trigate or FinFET according to the aspect ratio (WFin=HFin). The evaluation of zero temperature coefficient (ZTC) or temperature inflection point (TCP) is one of the key investigation of the thesis for optimal device operation and reliability. The sensitivity of DG-MOSFET and FinFET performances have been addressed towards a wide range of temperature variations, and the ZTC points are identified for both the architectures. From the presented outcomes of this work, some ideas have also been left for the researchers for design of optimum and reliable device architectures to meet the requirements of high performance (HP) and/or low standby power (LSTP) applications

PIXEL 2010 - a Resume

The Pixel 2010 conference focused on semiconductor pixel detectors for particle tracking/vertexing as well as for imaging, in particular for synchrotron light sources and XFELs. The big LHC hybrid pixel detectors have impressively started showing their capabilities. X-ray imaging detectors, also using the hybrid pixel technology, have greatly advanced the experimental possibilities for diiffraction experiments. Monolithic or semi-monolithic devices like CMOS active pixels and DEPFET pixels have now reached a state such that complete vertex detectors for RHIC and superKEKB are being built with these technologies. Finally, new advances towards fully monolithic active pixel detectors, featuring full CMOS electronics merged with efficient signal charge collection, exploiting standard CMOS technologies, SOI and/or 3D integration, show the path for the future. This r\'esum\'e attempts to extract the main statements of the results and developments presented at this conference.Comment: 8 pages, 19 figures, conference summar

Evaluation of a gate capacitance in the sub-aF range for a chemical field-effect transistor with a silicon nanowire channel

An evaluation of the gate capacitance of a field-effect transitor (FET) whose channel length and width are several ten nanometer, is a key point for sensors applications. However, experimental and precise evaluation of capacitance in the aF range or less has been extremely difficult. Here, we report an extraction of the capacitance down to 0.55 aF for a silicon FET with a nanoscale wire channel whose width and length are 15 and 50 nm, respectively. The extraction can be achieved by using a combination of four kinds of measurements: current characteristics modulated by double gates, random-telegraph-signal noise induced by trapping and detrapping of a single electron, dielectric polarization noise, and current characteristics showing Coulomb blockade at low temperature. The extraction of such a small gate capacitance enables us to evaluate electron mobility in a nanoscale wire using a classical model of current characteristics of a FET.Comment: To be published in IEEE Trans. Nanotechno