High-Current State Triggered in the Bulk FinFET Technology

Abstract

The reliability of the digital integrated circuits has been one of the most important topics, and multiple studies have been carried out to increase the reliability of digital integrated circuits. High-current state triggered in an integrated circuit (IC) is one of the most critical issues due to the potential for permanent damage to the physical structure of the IC. High-current state triggered by single-event latch-up and operating-frequency changes are introduced in this thesis. The performance of the single-event latch-up and the related failure-in-time (FIT) rate as a function of supply voltage and temperature are studied in this work. The results show that the FIT rates for single-event latch-up increases with increasing supply voltage and temperatures, suggesting the latch-up sensitivity increases with supply voltage and temperature. Measurements for holding voltage for the latch-up show a decreasing trend with increasing temperature. The behavior of the high-current state triggered by frequency-change is also introduced in this thesis. Similarity of this novel phenomenon to the single-event latch-up is also discussed. Results show that the holding voltage for the high-current state triggered by the operating-frequency change is a strong function of frequency and temperature.