Impact of MOSFET gate oxide breakdown on digital circuit operation and reliability

Digital Detection of Oxide Breakdown and Life-Time Extension in Submicron CMOS Technology

“…Measurements were done on-wafer without harmonic tuning (non class-E operation), using an RF choke to bias the open drain from a 1.2V supply voltage. The measured PAE of about 30% at 900MHz is comparable to state-of-the-art implementations in CMOS PAs [1,3] and shows that RF performance is not significantly degraded by the OBD detection circuitry. The lack of harmonic tuning in our measurements prevents waveshaping characteristics of high efficiency PAs (e.g., Class-E); resulting in the difference between simulations (Class-E) and measurement results (non-Class-E).…”

“…Due to the large size of power transistors, the relative effect of a single OBD on the performance is small; consequently defining reliable operation time as "the time to the first oxide breakdown of the gate dielectric in a transistor" [1] is overly strict [2]. However, in order to have a reasonable overall lifetime, normally an extra margin against degradation is built into the design, i.e., non-degraded power transistors have to be able to deliver more power than needed in the case of zero OBD, so they still function properly after a few OBDs.…”

“…A single oxide breakdown event (OBD) shows up as a sudden increase in oxide-leakage, which can be modeled as the sudden formation of a resistance of a few kΩ from gate to drain, to source or to bulk [1]. Due to the large size of power transistors, the relative effect of a single OBD on the performance is small; consequently defining reliable operation time as "the time to the first oxide breakdown of the gate dielectric in a transistor" [1] is overly strict [2].…”

Recovery of the MOSFET and Circuit Functionality After the Dielectric Breakdown of Ultrathin High-$k$ Gate Stacks

“…In highly-scaled technologies, the effect of the MOSFET gate dielectric breakdown (BD) on circuit functionality is not well understood yet [1]. Recently, we have reported a strong post-BD current reduction in MOS capacitors with ultrathin high-k dielectric stacks when the current during the BD transient is limited [2], suggesting that, as sometimes observed for SiO 2 [3][4][5], BD in these devices is a reversible phenomenon.…”

Design of Charge Pump Circuit With Consideration of Gate-Oxide Reliability in Low-Voltage CMOS Processes

“…Thus, the gate-oxide reliability issue [21] must be also considered into the design of charge pump circuits, especially in the low-voltage CMOS processes. In this paper, a new charge pump circuit that has better pumping efficiency but without the gate-oxide reliability issue in low-voltage processes is proposed [22].…”