Compact Degradation Sensors for Monitoring NBTI and Oxide Degradation

We designed two compact in situ NBTI and oxide degradation sensors with digital outputs in 130 nm CMOS. The 308 μm 2 NBTI sensor and the 150 μm 2 oxide degradation sensor provide digital frequency outputs and are compatible with a cell-based design methodology without requiring analog supplies. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on very large scale integration (VLSI) systems 2012-09, Vol.20 (9), p.1645-1655
Main Authors: Singh, P., Karl, E., Blaauw, D., Sylvester, D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied sciences
Calibration
CMOS
Degradation
Design. Technologies. Operation analysis. Testing
Digital
Electronics
Exact sciences and technology
Failure
General equipment and techniques
Instruments, apparatus, components and techniques common to several branches of physics and astronomy
Integrated circuits
Logic gates
Monitoring
negative bias temperature instability (NBTI)
Niobium base alloys
Oscillators
oxide breakdown
Oxides
Physics
reliability
Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices
Sensors
Sensors (chemical, optical, electrical, movement, gas, etc.)
remote sensing
Stress
Temperature measurement
Very large scale integration
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Summary:We designed two compact in situ NBTI and oxide degradation sensors with digital outputs in 130 nm CMOS. The 308 μm 2 NBTI sensor and the 150 μm 2 oxide degradation sensor provide digital frequency outputs and are compatible with a cell-based design methodology without requiring analog supplies. The sensors enable high-volume data collection and monitoring of degradation mechanisms to guide dynamic control schemes and warn of impending device failure. Large scale data-collection permits improved modeling and the potential for insight into the underlying reliability mechanisms. The oxide degradation sensor monitors the change in gate leakage under stress conditions and is the first proposed of its kind. The NBTI sensor is 110× smaller than previous work and is designed to compensate for temperature variations during measurement. A maximum error of 2.2% is observed for the NBTI sensor under process, voltage, and temperature variations. It provides ΔV th measurement with 3σ accuracy of 1.23 mV from 40° C-110° C.
ISSN:1063-8210
1557-9999
DOI:10.1109/TVLSI.2011.2161784