CMOS back-gated keeper technique

摘要

A novel methodology for the construction and operation of logical circuits and gates that make use of and contact to a fourth terminal (substrates/bodies) of MOSFET devices is described in detail. The novel construction and operation provides for maintaining such body-contacted MOSFET devices at a lower threshold voltage (V_Th) when actively on (to increase overdrive and performance), and at a higher relative threshold voltage when off (to reduce leakage power). Because the threshold potential of a gate moves inversely to its body potential, it follows then that in general, the body of a given device must be tied to the inverse of the device's drain voltage to achieve such a desirable threshold potential modulation effect for improved device, circuit, gate and logical family operation.