Self-heating characterization and its applications in technology development

Abstract

This work presents various device self-heating temperature sensing techniques and discusses their application in device reliability projection. Details of sensor design, technology choice, layout and ambient temperature impact on measurement results are discussed. The sensors produce excellent results which were confirmed through TCAD thermal simulation. Self-heating was studied by varying the number of fins per active region and proximity of sensor to heater was investigated. While most data presented here is on FinFET technology the learning and measurement techniques are applicable to planar technologies. Front-end-of-line (FEOL) reliability mechanism, hot carrier injection (HCI) was studied to show that self-heating effects can impact measurement results and recommendations are given on how to mitigate them. Self-heating is also studied for logic circuits by utilizing ring oscillators with several densities and stage counts to show that self-heating is considerably lower compared to constant voltage stress conditions conducted on discrete structures.