Performance enhancement of ring oscillators and transimpedance amplifiers by package strain

The appropriate external stress can enhance a device and circuit performance. The 7.4% speed enhancement is achieved for the 250-nm node ring oscillator under uniaxial tensile strain for a mutually perpendicular layout of the NFET and the PFET. The speed enhancement is less than 1.5% for the conventional parallel layout of the NFET and the PFET. A 180-nm node transimpedance amplifier has a /spl sim/ 5% bandwidth enhancement using a biaxial tensile strain or a uniaxial tensile strain parallel to the NFET channel to tune the peaking frequency of active inductor in the circuit. The package strain can provide an extra useful parameter for the future digital and analog circuit design.