The Impact of Dennard's Scaling Theory - IEEE

TECHNICAL ARTICLES
Fig. 7. Calculated and experimental subthreshold turn-on
characteristic for basic ion-implanted design for various
channel lengths with V sub = -1V, V d = 4V.
is reduced to the order of 1μ, the turn-on characteristic
shifts to a lower gate voltage due to a lowering
of the threshold voltage. The threshold voltage
occurs at about 10 −7 A where the turn-on characteristics
make a transition from the exponential
subthreshold behavior (a linear response on this
semilogarithmic plot) to the Id ∝ Vg 2 square-law
behavior. This current level can also be identified
from Fig. 3 as the actual current at the projected
threshold voltage, Vt . When the computed characteristics
were plotted in the manner of Fig. 3 they
gave 4 × 10 −8 A at threshold for all device lengths.
The band bending, ψs, at this threshold condition is
approximately 0.75 V. Some of the other device
designs considered with heavier substrate concentrations
gave a higher current at threshold, so, for
simplicity, the value of 10 −7 A was used in all cases
with a resultant small error in Vt .
MOSFET’s with various channel lengths were
measured to test the predictions of the two-dimensional
model. The technique for experimentally determining
the channel length for very short devices is
described in the Appendix. The experimental results
are plotted in Fig. 7 and show good agreement with
the calculated curves, especially considering the
somewhat different values of L. Another form of presentation
of this data is shown in Fig. 8 where the
threshold voltage is plotted as a function of channel
length. The threshold voltage is essentially constant
for L > 2μ, and falls by a reasonably small amount as
L is decreased from 2 to 1 μ, and then decreases
more rapidly with further reductions in L. For circuit
applications the nominal value of L could be set
somewhat greater than 1 μ so that, over an expected
range of deviation of L, the threshold voltage is reasonably
well controlled.
For example, L = 1.3±0.3μ would give
Vt = 1.0±0.1 V from chip to chip due to this shortchannel
effect alone. This would be tolerable for
many circuit applications because of the tracking of
different devices on a given chip, if indeed this
Fig. 8. Experimental and calculated dependence of threshold
voltage on channel length for basic ion-implanted
design with V sub =-1V, V d = 4V.
degree of control of L can be achieved. The experimental
drain characteristics for an ion-implanted
MOSFET with a 1.1-μ channel length are shown in
Fig. 9 for the grounded source condition. The gener-
Fig. 9. Experimental drain voltage characteristics for basic
ion-implanted design with V sub = 1V, L = 1.1μ, and w =
12.2μ. Curve tracer parameters; load resistance 30Ω, drain
voltage 4 V, gate voltage 0-4V in 8 steps each 0.5 V apart.
al shape of the characteristics is the same as those
observed for much larger devices. No extraneous
short-channel effects were observed for drain voltages
as large as 4 V. The experimental data in Figs. 6 - 9
were taken from devices using a B 11 channel implantation
energy and dose of 35 keV and 6.0 × 10 11
atoms/cm 2 , respectively.
The two-dimensional simulations were also used to
test the sensitivity of the design to various parameters.
The results are given in Fig. 10, which tabulates values
of threshold voltage as a function of channel
length for the indicated voltages. Fig. 10(a) is an idealized
representation for the basic design that has
been discussed thus far. The first perturbation to the
basic design was an increase in junction depth to 0.4
μ. This was found to give an appreciable reduction
in threshold voltage for the shorter devices in Fig.
10(b). Viewed another way, the minimum device
length would have to be increased by 20 percent
(from 1.0 to 1.2 μ) to obtain a threshold comparable
44 IEEE SSCS NEWSLETTER Winter 2007