Nowadays CMOS technology feature size is being scaled aggressively. Supply voltage is not proportionally scaled, gate dielectric thickness is reduced and as a result, the devices are subjected to stronger electric fields, thereby causing stress on transistor. Stress causes aging degradation, which can lead to dramatic consequences on mobile devices, aircraft, military systems, or medical devices. A method is proposed for designing two types of operational amplifiers with usage of only thin oxide devices, which are protected from stress conditions, namely from aging degradation. The proposed methods can also be implemented on other types of operational amplifiers.

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Year by year there are numerous new requirements set to the lifetime and reliability of integrated circuits (IC), particularly in medical spheres and automotive applications. Consistent with technology downscaling the device reliability issues are increasing, but the quality requirements become stronger. Nowadays the aging phenomenon is one of the critical issues in systems with longer lifetime. Therefore, the monitoring of aging and its consequence compensation have become one of the key parts for today’s ICs. A novel aging monitoring circuit is proposed in this paper. This new monitoring circuit monitors the aging degradation during lifetime of the IC and generates a binary co¬d¬e. This code is applied to the inputs of compensation circuits, which compensates the degrad¬ati¬on in the critical blocks throughout their lifetime. Monitoring circuit is realized with a 14 nm technology node and simulations proved the results’ validity.

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