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Multi Scale Modeling of MOS Device Strutures

Abdul R. Shaik, arshaik@asu.edu, Dept of ECEE, Arizona State University.

AbstractMultiscale modeling is gaining more

importance in recent times because of the high heat
power density in nanoscale device structures. A
global that includes the modeling at different scales is
required to understand the physical phenomena in
those structures. In this paper we model the
nanoscale MOS device structure in nano scale regime
as well as micro scale regime in order to understand
the effects of self-heating in MOS structures In this
regard we implemented a multiscale simulator using
Silvaco Tools and MATLAB on a test MOS device
and compared the results with single scale modeling.
Index TermsMultiscale Modeling, MOS, Silvaco,
Nano Scale, Micro Scale, MATLAB.
I. INTRODUCTION
MOS technology is useful to scale the devices down to
Cnanometer regimes. As the scaling continues more and
more challenges are faced and they should be addressed
to advance the technology. One of the many challenges
faced by CMOS scaling is the self-heating of devices.
The self-heating causes the heat power density to go
high as devices scale down. The ITRS[1] trends in heat
power density is as shown in Fig.1. The power density of
a nuclear reactor is on the order of 100 W/cm2 and that
of surface of sun is in the order of 7000 W/cm2.

Clearly if the issues with self-heating is not addressed

the scaling of devices will not happen in future. To
address the issues with self-heating one should have a
good simulation models and tools to study the
phenomena. To model the self-heating completely one
has to model the electron transport in nanoscale regime
and heat transport in micro scale regime. There are
several tools to simulate the nanoscale transport
phenomena. But these tools cannot be used for micro
scale simulations. Hence we built our own simulator that
models self-heating effects by coupling the modeling
tools at nanoscale regime with micro scale regime. The
tool for modeling the electron and phonon transport
phenomena is from Silvaco tools called Atlas and the
tool for modeling heat transport at micro scale is also
from Silvaco tools called Giga. The integration of these
tools is done in MATLAB programming environment
II. COUPLING OF TOOLS
The Silvaco Atlas tool used to model the nanoscale
transport phenomena requires an input script in which
one should specify the device structure, models used for
transport, simulation commands and input boundary
conditions. We call this input script as 2D input deck. A
similar input script is required for Giga tool and this
script is called 3D input deck. We call them as 2D and
3D because we use a 2D structure for nanoscale
simulation regime and the corresponding 3D structure
for micro scale simulation regime. The device structures
are shown in Fig.2

Fig. 2 The MOS device structure used for multiscale

simulation.
Fig 1 Heat Power Density Trends. Courtesy Erik Pop et
al (see [2])

The device structure is taken from IMEC. The device

consists of two planar nMOS structure with a common
drain. A detailed explanation about the device is given in

the next section.

A 2D structure is created using Devedit tool from
Silvaco. Here we use a 2D structure only to reduce the
complexity of the simulation in nanometer scale regime.
This 2D structure is called in 2D input script and
simulation model statements we added. Also we input
the boundary conditions and simulation commands here.
Once the nanoscale simulation is complete we save the
Heat Powers and use them as inputs for micrometer
scale simulation.
For micrometer scale simulation we considered the
corresponding 3D structure because the heat transport
will be modeled accurately and is not a complex
phenomena to simulate. The 3D structure is built
programmatically using MATLAB by including the
heating powers and thermal conductivities of the
materials used in the structure. The simulations outputs
the temperature profile of the device from which we
extract the input boundary conditions for nanoscale
simulation. The flow is as shown in Fig.3

Fig 3 The data flow for the coupling of tools in

MATLAB.
III. DEVICE STRUCTURE
The device considered for implementing the multi
scale simulation is as shown in Fig.2. The device
structure is taken from a test structure fabricated by
IMEC (Courtesy Erik Bury et al[3].). This structure is
used by IMEC to study the self-heating effects in 22nm
planar MOS devices. The structure consists of two
planar nMOS devices with common drain. The selfheating is studied by characterizing the structure in
heater sensor configuration as shown in Fig.4

Fig 4 Heater Sensor Configuration used for studying self

heating. (Courtesy Erik Bury et al, IMEC [3])
In heater and sensor configuration one of the nMOS
device is biased in saturation (called heater) and other in
subthreshold region (called sensor). Most of the input
current will go into heater and gets heated up. The
sensor is placed very near to the heater and thus the
sensor temperature also get heated up. Thus it affects the
electrical characteristics of sensor. We sense this effect
by measuring the subthreshold current and extracting the
slope of the subthreshold I-V characteristic. The
subthreshold slope of a MOS device depends on the
temperature of the device. Hence one can determine the
change in temperature by measuring the subthreshold
slope with and without a heating element. This principle
is used by Erik Bury et al.[3] to measure the temperature
of sensor.
Once the temperature of sensor is known and by
knowing the thermal resistance of the material the
temperature of the heater can be determined. The
experimentally measured temperatures are recorded and
we try to explain the temperatures using our multi scale
simulation
IV. RESULTS
Using the simulation technique described in the
previous sections we simulated the device structure for
determining the temperature profile of the device and
peak temperature region in the device. The final
temperature profile is as shown in the Fig. 5 and Fig.6.

Fig 5 The temperature profile from Atlas tool

Fig 8 The temperature profile at iteration 1 (peak

Temperature is 329K)

Fig 6 The temperature profile from Giga Tool

The convergence of the multi scale simulation is as
shown in the Fig.7. The peak temperature profile curves
are as shown in the Fig.8 to Fig.11.

PEAK TEMPERATURE

Peak Temperature vs
Iteration Number
357.5
357
356.5
356
355.5
355
354.5
354
353.5
353
352.5

Fig 9 The temperature profile at iteration 2 (peak

Temperature is 370K)

356.83

353.07

353.3

353.29
353.28

ITERATION NUMBER
Fig 7 The figure showing the convergence by plotting
the peak temperature versus iteration number(peak
temperature from 3D simulation)

Fig 10 The temperature profile at iteration 3 (peak

Temperature is 367K)

[3] Bury, E.; Kaczer, B.; Roussel, P.; Ritzenthaler, R.;

Raleva, K.; Vasileska, D.; Groeseneken, G.,
"Experimental validation of self-heating simulations
and projections for transistors in deeply scaled
nodes," Reliability Physics Symposium, 2014 IEEE
International , vol., no., pp.XT.8.1,XT.8.6, 1-5 June
2014
[4] S. S. Qazi, A. R. Shaik, A. Laturia, R. L. Dougherty,
X. Guo, and D. Vasileska, "Multi-Scale Modeling of
Self-Heating Effects in Silicon Nanoscale Devices",
15th International conference on Nanotechnology
2015.
[5] Silvaco manual from Silvaco website (See link:
www.silvaco.com )
Fig 11 The temperature profile at iteration 4 (peak
Temperature is 368K)
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE SCOPE
In this paper we used drift diffusion model to
simulate the nanoscale device structure in order to
reduce the complexity of the multi scale simulation.
The simulation results shows that the multi scale
simulator is working properly and since the simulation
is converging we conclude that our method of
coupling the tools is good. Also the peak temperature
values are 367K. With the same conditions instead of
drift diffusion model if we apply the monte carlo
transport model the peak temperature is around 354K
[4]. This shows that drift diffusion model gives
overestimates the peak temperature.
One can also include a Energy Balance model for
the transport in nanoscale regime to give better results.
These results have to be compared with experimental
result to get the accuracy of the modeling technique.
VI. REMARKS
We tried to include the energy balance model given
in the Silvaco tool but we found that the simulation is
not converging. Also we observed that higher number
of thermcontact[5] statements which are used to input
temperature boundary conditions resulted in
divergence issues. So these issues have to address in
future work of this paper.
REFERENCES
[1] International
Technology
Roadmap
for
Semiconductors (ITRS) (see link: www.itrs.net)
[2] Erik Pop, Sanjiv Sinha, Kenneth E. Goodson,
Heating Generation and Transport in Nanometerscale Transistors, invited paper. (see link:
https://nanoheat.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publi
cations/A90.pdf )