Impact of Discrete-Charge-Induced Variability on Scaled MOS Devices

摘要

As MOS transistors are scaled down, the impact of randomly placed discrete charge (impurity atoms, traps and surface states) on device characteristics rapidly increases. Significant variability caused by random dopant fluctuation (RDF) is a direct result of this, which urges the adoption of new device architectures (ultra-thin body SOI FETs and Fin-FETs) which do not use impurity for body doping. Variability caused by traps and surface states, such as random telegraph noise (RTN), though less significant than RDF today, will soon be a major problem. The increased complexity of such residual-charge-induced variability due to non-Gaussian and time-dependent behavior will necessitate new approaches for variation-aware design.