Record RF performance of standard 90 nm CMOS technology

Abstract

We have optimized 3 key RF devices realized in standard logic 90 nm CMOS technology and report a record performance in terms of n-MOS maximum oscillation frequency fmaz (280 GHz), varactoi tuning range and varactor and inductor quality factor. gration design rules the source and drain interconnect is made wider than the minimum design rule and realized in the metal levels 2, 3, and 4. For characterization. several of these unit cells are placed in parallel to achieve a total width of 120 pm. Figs. 2 and 3 illustrate the standard extraction of the RF figures of merit f~ and fmo. from measurements of the current gain H21 and Mason's gain (U), taken up to 110 GHz, where all in-17.6.1

Low-K/Cu CMOS-Based SoC Technology With 115-GHz<tex>$f_T$</tex>, 100-GHz<tex>$f_max$</tex>, Low Noise 80-nm RF CMOS, High-Q MiM Capacitor, and Spiral Cu Inductor

“…The extraction by U method assumes a 20 dB/dec slope and generally predicts much higher . For our 80-nm nMOS with m,the U method suggests an as high as 210 GHz, which happened to be nearly the same as the referred state-of-the-art 90 130-nm technologies [6], [7], [19] adopting at m. Our paper suggests that finger width is a dominant factor determining the peak and a fair comparison of should be based on the same extraction method. Noise figure is an even more important parameter to be verified due to the general concern for the surface channel conduction nature by CMOS devices.…”

“…The comparison between this paper and the published results [19] in terms of under varying drain current density indicates better performance of higher achieved by this work for finger width fixed the same m and adopting the same de-embedding method, i.e., open and short. Table IV provides the RF nMOS performance benchmark with the state-of-art-technology at 90-nm nodes published by IMEC and Philips [6], [7], 0.13-m and 90-nm nodes by IBM [8], and the 0.13-m node by Brodersen's group [19]. We see a very consistent trend in versus scaling wherein 115 GHz achieved by 80-nm nMOS indicates 25% improvement over 92 GHz offered by 92-nm nMOS, both at the 0.13-m node.…”

Performance trends of Si-based RF transistors

“…9 shows the best reported minimum noise figures of Si MOSFETs as a function of frequency. The lowest noise figures are below 0.5 dB up to 10 GHz [18,19,23] and below 1 dB up to 26 GHz [9,19]. This is sufficiently low for many applications.…”

New RF extrinsic resistances extraction procedure for deep‐submicron MOS transistors

“…This has been achieved by the continuous down scaling of the MOS transistors (MOSFET) geometry. This reduction has promoted the fabrication of sub-100 nm transistors and the possibility to get devices with cutoff frequencies higher than 200 GHz [1][2][3].…”