Research Of Prognostic Technology On Hot Carriers Injection Failure Of Integrated Circuit

As integrated circuit technology innovation, the operating voltage of semiconductordevices has not proportionally reduced as the size of semiconductor devices, which will leadto hot carrier injection becoming more serious, the device parameters such as thresholdvoltage, transconductance, etc. drifting, and the reliability of the integrated circuit beingaffected. Due to the traditional assurance technology of reliability has "after action"Limitation, it has been unable to adapt to modern trends of VLSI circuit, so it is urgentlyneeded to explore new reliability techniques. In this case, the prognostic and HealthManagement (PHM) technology emerged, which is a key technology to achieve new ideasand solutions such as condition based Maintenance, autonomic security, perception andresponse, etc. This article will use the principle of PHM technology to carry out the researchof Prognostic technology on Hot Carriers Injection (HCI) failure of integrated Circuit.According to the route of PHM technology and the failure mechanism of HCI, the paperselected the threshold voltage as the reference parameter, used substrate/drain current lifemodel to present a prognostic technology of HCI, which overcame the traditional limitationsand finished:(1) the prognostic cell will failed earlier and give an alarm signal;(2) settingdifferent alarm distances;(3) predicting the remaining life of host circuit.A HCI prognostic circuit was designed and simulated by utilizing SMIC0.18μm CMOSprocess, and using threshold voltage shifting50mV as a failure symptom. Also, the overallcircuit’s former simulation, layout design and the post-simulation have been conducted. Asthe target of pre-design, the overall circuit simulation results showed that when the circuit wasin the state of stress, the output of the circuit was high voltage. When the circuit was in thestate of test: if the threshold voltage increased by no more than50mV, the output of the circuitwas low voltage; if the threshold voltage increased by more than50mV, the output of thecircuit was high voltage, and an alarm signal would be given.The prognostic circuit designed has simple structure, high reliability and can be easilyintegrated into a single chip. Thus, the prognostic circuit can experience the same life’sprocess with the host circuit, and give an alarm signal for of imminent failure of the hostcircuit. So, it is useful to avoid a fatal failure of integrated circuit, reduce maintenance costs,and guarantee the reliability of electronic products.