Impact of negative bias temperature instability on digital circuit reliability

We have examined the impact of NBTI degradation on digital circuits through the stressing of ring oscillator circuits. By subjecting the circuit to pMOS NBTI stress, we have unambiguously determined the circuit reliability impact of NBTI. We demonstrate that the relative frequency degradation of the NBTI stressed ring oscillator increases as the voltage at operation decreases. This behavior can be explained by reduced transistor gate overdrive and reduced voltage headroom at the circuit level. We present evidence that donor interface state generation during NBTI stress is a significant component of the transistor degradation. Further, we show that the static noise margin of a SRAM memory cell is degraded by NBTI and the relative degradation increases as the operating voltage decreases.     

Impact of NBTI on the temporal performance degradation of digital circuits

Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) has become one of the major causes for reliability degradation of nanoscale circuits. In this letter, we propose a simple analytical model to predict the delay degradation of a wide class of digital logic gate based on both worst case and activity dependent threshold voltage change under NBTI. We show that by knowing the threshold voltage degradation of a single transistor due to NBTI, one can predict the performance degradation of a circuit with a reasonable degree of accuracy. We find that digital circuits are much less sensitive (approximately 9.2% performance degradation in ten years for 70 nm technology) to NBTI degradation than previously anticipated.     

基于40nm CMOS工艺电路的NBTI退化表征方法

负偏压温度不稳定性(NBTI)退化是制约纳米级集成电路性能及寿命的主导因素之一,基于40 nm CMOS工艺对NBTI模型、模型提参及可靠性仿真展开研究。首先对不同应力条件下PMOS晶体管NBTI退化特性进行测试、建模及模型参数提取,然后建立了基于NBTI效应的VerilogA等效受控电压源,并嵌入Spectre^TM仿真库中,并将此受控电压源引入反相器及环形振荡器模块电路中进行可靠性仿真分析,可有效反映NBTI退化对电路性能的影响。提出了一套完整可行的电路NBTI可靠性预测方法,包括NBTI模型、模型参数提取、VerilogA可靠性模型描述以及电路级可靠性仿真分析,可为纳米级高性能、高可靠性集成电路设计提供有效参考。     

Impact of NBTI on performance of domino logic circuits in nano-scale CMOS

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) in pMOS transistors has become a major reliability concern in the state-of-the art digital circuit design. This paper discusses the effects of NBTI on 32 nm technology high fan-in dynamic OR gate, which is widely used in high-performance circuits. The delay degradation and power dissipation of domino logic, as well as the Unity Noise Gain (UNG), are analyzed in the presence of NBTI degradation. We have shown the degradation in the output inverter pMOS transistor of the domino gate has a dominant impact on the delay in comparison with the keeper impact. Based on this analysis we have proposed that upsizing just the output inverter pMOS transistor can compensate for the NBTI degradation. Moreover, the impact of tuning the duty cycle of the clock has been investigated. It has been shown that although the keeper and the precharge transistors experience more NBTI degradation by increasing the low level in the clock signal, the total performance of the circuit will improve. We have also proposed an adaptive compensation technique based on Forward Body Biasing (FBB), to recover the performance of the aged circuit.     

An efficient NBTI sensor and compensation circuit for stable and reliable SRAM cells

Aggressive technology scaling causes unavoidable reliability issues in modern high-performance integrated circuits. The major reliability factors in nanoscale VLSI design is the negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) degradation and soft-errors in the space and terrestrial environment. In this paper, an on-chip analog adaptive body bias (OA-ABB) circuit to compensate the degradation due to NBTI aging is presented. The OA-ABB is used to compensate the parameter variations and improves the SRAM circuit yield regarding read current, hold SNM, read SNM, write margin and word line write margin (WLWM). The OA-ABB consists of standby leakage current sensor circuit, decision circuit and body bias control circuit. Circuit level simulation for SRAM cell is performed for pre- and post-stress of 10 years NBTI aging. The proposed OA-ABB reduces the effect of NBTI on the stability of SRAM cell. The simulation results show the hold SNM, read SNM and WLWM decreases by 10.55%, 8.55%, and 3.25% respectively in the absence of OA-ABB whereas hold SNM, read SNM and WLWM decreases by only 0.61%, 1.48%, and 0.72% respectively by using OA-ABB to compensate the degradation. The figure of merit of 6T SRAM cell also improved by 17.24% with the use of OA-ABB.     

NBTI机制下运算放大器的性能退化分析及其可靠性设计

随着CMOS器件尺寸的不断缩小,集成电路设计阶段的可靠性问题变得愈加重要,NBTI效应作为重要的可靠性问题之一得到了大量的研究,并从电路级对其提出了改进。采用等效电路模型表征NBTI退化对模拟电路的影响,研究了两级运算放大器在NBTI效应影响下电路参数的退化,分析并确定了影响传统两级运算放大器性能的关键器件。在此基础上,对传统运放结构进行改进,引入反馈,使-3dB带宽的退化量由27%降到了1%左右,从而减小NBTI退化对电路性能的影响。     

Transistor network restructuring against NBTI degradation

Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) has become a critical reliability concern for nanometer PMOS transistors. A logic function can be designed by alternative transistor networks. This work evaluates the impact of the NBTI effect in the delay of CMOS gates considering both the effect of intra-cell pull-up structures and the effect of decomposing the function into multiple stages. Intra-cell pull-up PMOS transistor arrangements have been restructured to minimize the number of devices under severe NBTI degradation. Also, circuits decomposed into more than one stage have been compared to their single stage design version. Electrical simulation results reveal that the restructuring of intra-cell transistor networks recovers up to 15% of rise delay degradation due to NBTI, while the decomposition of single stage circuit topologies into multi-stage topologies tends to reduce the rise degradation delay at a cost of fall delay degradation.     

The Impact of NBTI Effect on Combinational Circuit: Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis

Negative-bias-temperature instability (NBTI) has become the primary limiting factor of circuit life time. In this paper, we develop a hierarchical framework for analyzing the impact of NBTI on the performance of logic circuits under various operation conditions, such as the supply voltage, temperature, and node switching activity. Given a circuit topology and input switching activity, we propose an efficient method to predict the degradation of circuit speed over a long period of time. The effectiveness of our method is comprehensively demonstrated with the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) benchmarks and a 65-nm industrial design. Furthermore, we extract the following key design insights for reliable circuit design under NBTI effect, including: 1) During dynamic operation, NBTI-induced degradation is relatively insensitive to supply voltage, but strongly dependent on temperature; 2) There is an optimum supply voltage that leads to the minimum of circuit performance degradation; circuit degradation rate actually goes up if supply voltage is lower than the optimum value; 3) Circuit performance degradation due to NBTI is highly sensitive to input vectors. The difference in delay degradation is up to 5$times $ for various static and dynamic operations. Finally, we examine the interaction between NBTI effect, and process and design uncertainty in realistic conditions.      

PMOSFET动态NBTI效应的研究

负偏压温度不稳定性效应(NBTI)已经成为影响CMOS集成电路可靠性的一个关键因素,而动态应力条件下的NBTI效应对器件和电路的影响越来越受到关注。对PMOSFET的动态NBTI效应进行了系统介绍,讨论了动态应力条件下NBTI(DNBTI)效应和静态应力下NBTI(SNBTI)退化机理,综述了DNBTI效应的动态恢复机制以及影响因素,最后介绍了NBTI效应对电路的影响。随着器件尺寸的日益缩小,如何提高电路的可靠性变得日益重要,进一步研究NBTI效应对电路的影响从而进行NBTI电路级可靠性设计已成为集成电路设计关注的焦点。     

PMOS NBTI-induced circuit mismatch in advanced technologies

PMOS transistor degradation due to negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) has proven to be a significant concern to present CMOS technologies. This is of particular importance for analog applications where the ability to match device characteristics to a high precision is critical. Analog circuits use larger than minimum device dimensions to minimize the effects of process variation, leaving PMOS NBTI as a possible performance limiter. This paper examines the effect of PMOS-NBTI induced mismatch on analog circuits in a 90 nm technology.     

Impact of NBTI induced variations on delay locked loop multi-phase clock generator

Negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) is a serious reliability concern for both analog and digital CMOS VLSI circuits. The shift in threshold voltage and reduction in drain current due to NBTI in p-channel MOSFETs are time, bias and temperature dependent. The degradation of the PMOS at any critical nodes in the circuit leads to the failure of the circuit immediately or in few months/year. The Delay-Locked-Loop (DLL) which is used as multi-phase clock generator for microprocessors, frequency synthesizers, time-to-digital converter (TDC) etc. reduces the phase error between output and reference clock until it is locked. The delay variations due to process, voltage and temperature fluctuations are governed by its feedback system. At start-up, the phase shift of the output clock should lie between 0.5 and 1.5 times the time period of the reference clock to achieve regular locking. The deviations from the above criteria due to NBTI degradation directly affect the control system and lead to erroneous locking. The NBTI-induced time-dependent variation in PMOS of the delay stage in voltage-controlled delay line (VCDL) of DLL affects the delay in each stage of VCDL and propagates as phase error to the output clock. This paper analyzes the impact of NBTI-induced time-dependent variations in Delay-Locked-Loop (DLL) based clock generators for the first time. The DLL is designed with 180 nm technologies with working frequency range from 75 MHz to 220 MHz. The time dependent variations in VCDL, the most sensitive blocks of DLL, are analyzed. It is observed that these time-dependent variations increase the phase error and the working of DLL is severely affected at the rearmost end of frequency range. The output clock gets deviated and observed to be locked late after π/2 or π radians from the nominal lock. It is essential to prevent DLL locking to an incorrect delay or false lock and to bring the output clock back to the correct position. An adaptive body bias circuit is proposed in this paper to reduce the impact of NBTI degradation and thereby to prevent erroneous locking in DLL.     

Negative bias temperature instability: What do we understand?

We present a brief overview of negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) commonly observed for in p-channel metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) when stressed with negative gate voltages at elevated temperatures and discuss the results of such stress on device and circuit performance and review interface traps and oxide charges, their origin, present understanding, and changes due to NBTI. Next we discuss some of the models that have been proposed for both NBTI degradation and recovery and p- versus n-MOSFETs. We also address the time and energy dependence effects of NBTI and crystal orientation. Finally we mention some aspect of circuit degradation. The general conclusion is that although we understand much about NBTI, several aspects are poorly understood. This may be due to a lack of a basic understanding or due to varying experimental data that are likely the result of sample preparation and measurement conditions.     

HCI and NBTI induced degradation in gate-all-around silicon nanowire transistors

The silicon nanowire transistor (SNWT) with gate-all-around (GAA) structure can be considered as one of the potential candidates for ultimate scaling due to its superior gate control capability and improved carrier transportation property. In this paper, hot carrier injection (HCI) and negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) behavior of n-type and p-type SNWTs with top-down approach is discussed. In addition to initial fast degradation and quick saturation of NBTI stress behavior, non-negligible impacts of electron traps on the stress/recovery characteristics in p-SNWTs with metal gate is found and characterized with a kind of combined I_g–I_d RTN technique. The NBTI behavior is modeled taking account of the impacts from unique structural nature of GAA SNWTs. NBTI induced performance degradation of the typical nanowire-based circuits is estimated based on the proposed model. In addition, stochastic degradation induced by single/few trap in the thin-body SNWTs is observed and analyzed.     

Application profiles of integrated circuits in various industry fields

Integrated circuits play an increasingly important role in various fields.The aging effects,which lead to robustness problems in integrated circuits,has gained more attention.Therefore,during the design process the robustness problem must already be calculated.Generally,the time-dependent influences such as NBTI（negative bias temperature instability）and HCI（hot carrier injection）contribute to circuit aging problems[1].     

A comprehensive model of PMOS NBTI degradation

Negative bias temperature instability has become an important reliability concern for ultra-scaled Silicon IC technology with significant implications for both analog and digital circuit design. In this paper, we construct a comprehensive model for NBTI phenomena within the framework of the standard reaction–diffusion model. We demonstrate how to solve the reaction–diffusion equations in a way that emphasizes the physical aspects of the degradation process and allows easy generalization of the existing work. We also augment this basic reaction–diffusion model by including the temperature and field-dependence of the NBTI phenomena so that reliability projections can be made under arbitrary circuit operating conditions.     

NBTI Impact on RF Front End in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor network （WSN）, the communication node is the heart of the whole system. Negative bias temperature instability （NBTI） is becoming one of the most important factors that decide the life time of node chips, especially with the feature size declining. In this paper, the NBTI impact on the front-end circuits in the WSN nodes is studied, such as voltage-controlled oscillator （VCO）, charge pump （CP）, low noise amplifier （LNA）, and even the whole transceiver system. The circuit level NBTI degeneration models are built for the key modules and the entire transceiver. It is shown that the phase noise of the VCO will be deteriorated, the current mismatch of the CP and the noise figure of the LNA will both be increased, and the sensitivity and the adjacent channel selectivity （ACS） will be depressed by NBTI. The conclusions are proved by simulation results using HJTC 0.18 μm technology.     

基于神经网络的逻辑门NBTI退化建模与计算

提出了基于神经网络的逻辑门退化延迟模型。根据逻辑门延迟数据特征,采用神经网络BP算法,对仿真样本数据进行训练,获得7种基本逻辑门延迟退化计算方法以及网络模型参数。基于45 nm CMOS工艺进行验证,模型计算值与Spice仿真数据的误差不超过5%。在此基础上,提出NBTI效应下的电路路径延迟退化计算流程,并编写计算程序,对基本逻辑门构成的任意组合逻辑电路(ISCAS85)进行NBTI退化分析,获得路径时序的NBTI退化量。采用该模型,可在电路设计阶段预测电路时序,为高性能、高可靠性数字集成电路的设计提供重要依据。     

数字电路中NBTI效应仿真及建模方法的研究

负偏压温度不稳定性(NBTI)效应已成为影响数字电路设计的重要可靠性问题之一。首先讨论了PMOS晶体管中NBTI效应对数字电路的影响,提出针对不同工艺PMOS管中NBTI效应建模的流程,设计了一种基于SPICE模型的NBTI仿真模型。该模型能够通过Cadence软件调用,并在实际的数字电路设计中进行动态仿真,预测NBTI效应对电路性能的影响。基于该建模流程,在Cadence软件中对基于40 nm工艺的一级两输入与非门和四十级反相器组成的环形振荡器进行仿真。仿真结果表明,该模型能够对不同工艺下PMOS管中的NBTI效应进行准确、有效地仿真,为数字电路的可靠性设计提供保障。     

An accurate MOSFET aging model for 28 nm integrated circuit simulation

MOSFET device aging represents a significant challenge for the IC industry, being increasingly more responsible for reliability failure in advanced process technology nodes. As the device electrical characteristics, such as threshold voltage and drain current, degrade with time, circuit performance also deteriorates, resulting in shorter lifetime and narrower safety margins between requirements and actual product reliability.Major device aging mechanisms include the hot-carrier injection (HCI), the negative bias-temperature instability (NBTI) for p-channel MOSFETs, and the positive bias-temperature instability (PBTI) for n-channel devices.HCI in NMOS and PMOS has been known for many years. In the presence of high electric fields, carriers are injected from the drain end of the channel into the gate dielectric, changing its electrical properties over time.PMOS NBTI has been studied in the past, and it continues to present a challenge for today’s technologies. NMOS PBTI is a phenomenon notably present in high-k metal-gate stacks. The partial recovery of degradation, an effect important for both phenomena, has been particularly challenging to model for circuit simulation, and not addressing it may result in overly pessimistic circuit lifetime predictions.In this paper we present an accurate, physics-based MOSFET aging model that encompasses degradation due to HCI, NBTI and PBTI. The model formulation on bias, geometry and temperature, and a unique methodology for modeling the AC partial-recovery effect of BTI are detailed and analyzed. The extraction methodology of the aging model parameters is further described. The model is implemented in an efficient MOSRA flow for SPICE and Fast SPICE circuit simulation, which has been successfully used to improve IC reliability-related yield in numerous 28 nm tapeouts.     

NBTI reliability on high-k metal-gate SiGe transistor and circuit performances

Negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI) on high-k metal-gate SiGe p-channel MOSFETs has been examined. SiGe p-MOSFETs shows reduced interface states and enhanced NBTI reliability compared to their Si p-channel control devices as evidenced by experimental data. Impact of NBTI reliability on digital and RF circuits has been also examined using extracted fresh and stressed BSIM4 model parameters in circuit simulation. High-k metal-gate SiGe pMOSFETs demonstrate less inverter pull-up delay, smaller noise figure of a cascode low-noise amplifier, and larger output power and power-added efficiency than their Si counterparts when subject to NBTI stress.