A Ring-Oscillator-Based Reliability Monitor for Isolated Measurement of NBTI and PBTI in High-k/Metal Gate Technology

Author

Kim, Tony Tae-Hyoung ; Pong-Fei Lu ; Jenkins, Keith A. ; Kim, Chris H.

Author_Institution

IBM T. J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

Volume

23

Issue

7

fYear

2015

fDate

Jul-15

Firstpage

1360

Lastpage

1364

Abstract

Ring-oscillator-based test structures that can separately measure the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and positive bias temperature instability (PBTI) degradation effects in digital circuits are presented for high-k metal gate devices. The mathematical derivation also shows that the structure for frequency degradation measurement can directly be used for estimating the portion of the NBTI and PBTI in the conventional ring oscillator. The proposed test structures including frequency degradation sensing circuitry have been implemented in an experimental high-k/metal gate SoI process.

Keywords

digital circuits; high-k dielectric thin films; integrated circuit measurement; integrated circuit reliability; negative bias temperature instability; oscillators; NBTI; PBTI; digital circuits; frequency degradation measurement; frequency degradation sensing circuitry; high-k metal gate devices; isolated measurement; negative bias temperature instability; positive bias temperature instability; ring-oscillator-based reliability monitor; Degradation; Delays; Frequency measurement; Logic gates; Ring oscillators; Stress; Temperature measurement; Bias temperature instability; high-k/metal gate; on-chip measurement; reliability monitor; ring oscillator;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1063-8210

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TVLSI.2014.2339364

Filename

6872552