Contribution to the characterization of the hump effect in MOSFET submicronic technologies

Abstract

A new method allowing the automatic characterization of the subthreshold hump effect (Sallagoity et al., IEEE TED vol. 43, no. 11, pp. 1900-6, 1996) is presented in this paper. It makes use of a variable transformation based on observations made with a hump model. This model considers two sub-transistors with different threshold voltages in parallel. The extracted parameters are the hump effect magnitude, the weak inversion slope and the extrapolated leakage current at V/sub g/=0 V. After implementation in our automatic test system, the routine has been successfully applied to the 0.25 /spl mu/m technology of the Crolles Centre Commun. The efficiency and reliability of this routine are demonstrated whatever the operating bias and temperature. It is noticed that this method is a useful tool to monitor and study the hump effect.