Improving MOSFETs Radiation Robustness by using
the Wave Layout to Boost Analog ICs Applications
Rafael Navarenho de Souza I , Student Member, IEEE, Marcilei A. Guazzelli da Silveira
2
, Member, IEEE and
Salvador Pinillos Gimenez
l
, Member, IEEE.
I Department of Electrical Engineering, Centro Universitario da FE!, Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
2
Department of Physics, Centro Universitario da FE!, Sao Bernardo do Campo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
E-mail: rafaelnds@gmai1.com
Abstract - This paper describes an experimental comparative
study of the total ionizing dose (TID) effects between the Metal
Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) Field Effect Transistors (MOSFET)
manufactured with the Wave (S gate geometry) and the standard
layouts (CnM). Because of the special characteristic of the bird's
beaks regions of the Wave MOSFET WnM), this innovative
layout proposal for transistors is able to increase the devices TID
hardness for analog integrated circuits (IC) applications in terms
of the unity voltage gain frequency (fT) without causing any
additional cost to the Complementary MOS (CMOS)
manufacturing process.
Kywords- Wave layout, radiation hardness by design, total
ionizing dose, TID, analog circuits, unit voltage gain frequency.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Total Ionizing Dose (TID) effects produce long-term
damage within the oxide layers of the electronic devices,
worsening the electrical performance of MOSFET [1]. New
materials, multiple-gates and three-dimensional (3D) devices
are the subject of intense research and development [1],
following the Intenational Technology Roadmap for
Semiconductor (ITRS) [2] speciications for uture
technologies and devices, in order to overcome the scaling
limits [3-5]. Many efforts have been made to improve the
devices radiation hardness, which mainly can be divided in
two categories. One category is related to the optimization of
manufacturing process with different materials and
technologies [2], the other one focuses on using non-standard
layout for MOSFET [4].
Several techniques have been investigated to reduce the
TID effect, one way is to extend and overlap the gate oxide to
the lateral isolation region of the MOSFET [6], like in the
Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) technologies where similar
method can be applied by pulling back the source and drain
regions rom the trench edges [7].
Another proposal is the use of Silicon-On-Insulator (SOl)
wafer that isolates the substrate of the operation active region
of MOSFET with a buried oxide (BOX) to reduce the power
dissipation, the latch-up, the short channel effects (SCE), and
the single event effects (SEE) [S]. However, the thick BOX in
SOl MOSFET substrates increases the undesired TID effects
in these devices, because the ionizing radiation induces
positive charges to be trapped in BOX [9, 10].
978-1-4799-4696-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
The Multiple-Gates Field Effects Transistors (MugFET)
have been studied and indicated to be one of the most
promising devices to meet the downscale, although they have
been presented a few years ago, with the issue of the FinFET
concept to replace the planar CMOS technology [11].
In order to meet the downscaling, especially in the sub 20-
nm node, the planar ultrathin buried oxide (UTBOX) and thin
body SOl (UTB) technologies have been considered as an
altenative to replace the Bulk substrate technology [12], in
order to reduce the SCE and the random dopant luctuations
(RDF) [13]. Besides that, the use of the UTBOX enables a
low-power multi-threshold-voltage operation by the use of the
back-gate bias [14], even though the UTBOX exhibits a
signiicant shiting range of the threshold voltage (VTH), these
devices are able to mitigate the TID effects, due to its stronger
capacitive coupling effects [15]. Although, the gate oxide
becomes thinner and less sensitive to the TID effect, MOSFET
manufactured with the Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) is not
scaled down in the same proportion to the device size and
because of that limits the ionizing radiation tolerance in the
Bulk CMOS technology (radiation induced positive charge to
be trapped in the STI) [16]. All of these techniques previously
considered generate a high cost impact of the CMOS
manufacturing process.
Besides that, the use of Hardness By Design (HBD)
enables the improvement of the device radiation hardness [16],
a very eicient way is to use Enclosed Layout Transistors
(ELT), which completely eliminated the parasitic leakage path
of the drain current (IDS) [17]. The ELT is "edgeless", for
instance, an annular gate region completely surrounding the
drain region, which in turn it is surrounding by the source
region [IS]. This approach shows to be very effective,
enabling the MOSFET to present TID tolerances in multi
Mrad scale, [19-20]. The disadvantages for using this
approach are the die area and capacitance increase, and the
aspect ratio (WIL) limitations [21-23], despite the fact that the
ELT is inherently asymmetric [24]. A number of variations of
the ELT have also been developed to alleviate those
shortcomings to some level [25], although, they do not reduce
the die area and change the manufacturing process.