Modeling and Probing Hot-Carrier Luminescence From MOSFETs

We present an extended modeling for MOSFETs that time-dependently predicts the spontaneous photon emission due to hot carriers. Such very faint luminescence waveforms (less than one photon for every 10⁶ switching events) can be measured by means of high-sensitivity single-photon detectors, where time jitter is lower than 30 ps. Thanks to the model, which runs in most computer-aided-design circuital simulators, it is possible to cross-check measurements with simulations in order to quickly identify either design and fabrication errors or mismatches due to parasitism, interconnections, etc. Moreover, we demonstrate that the proposed modeling is a powerful investigation tool not only for digital circuits but also for analog ICs.