A comprehensive model of PMOS NBTI degradation

Abstract

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. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd.