RF circuit performance degradation due to soft breakdown and hot-carrier effect in deep-submicrometer CMOS technology

• Published in: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques Vol. 49; no. 9; pp. 1546 - 1551
• Main Authors: Qiang Li, Jinlong Zhang, Wei Li, Yuan, J.S., Yuan Chen, Oates, A.S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.09.2001; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Breakdown; Circuit breakers; Circuit noise; Circuit optimization; Cutoff frequency; Data mining; Degradation; Devices; Electric breakdown; Hot carriers; Linearity; Noise; Performance degradation; Radio frequencies; Radio frequency; Scattering parameters; Stress; Stresses
• ISSN: 0018-9480; 1557-9670
• DOI: 10.1109/22.942565

A systematic study of RF circuit performance degradation subject to oxide soft breakdown (SBD), and hot-carrier (HC) stress is presented in this paper. DC and RF characteristics before and after stress are extracted from the experimental data. The effects of SBD and HC stress on s-parameters, cutoff frequency, third-order interception point, and noise parameters are examined. The performance drifts of gain, noise figure, linearity, and input matching of the RF low-noise amplifier are demonstrated by SpectreRF simulation results based on measured device data.