Proceedings 1994 E E E International SO1 Conference, Oct.

1994

19

MODELING THE I-V CHARACTERISTICS OF FULLY-DEPLETED

SO1 MOSFETS INCLUDING SELF-HEATING
D. h,
Lisa T. Su*, Brian S. Doyle and Dimitri A. Antoniadis*
Digital Equipment Corporation, 77 Reed Road, Hudson, MA 01749
*Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 39-415, Cambridge, MA 02139
Fully-depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI)MOSFETs are a strong potential candidate for
future ULSI CMOS applications [l]. In order to evaluate the merits of these devices an accurate
model of the output characteristics applicable to sub-half micron channel lengths is needed. Previous
work on modeling the I-V (current-voltage) characteristics of thin-film SO1 MOSFETs has mainly
been based on inaccurate velocity-field relation for carriers in the channel region. Moreover, in most
models, conductance and capacitances show discontinuities a t the transition points from subthreshold to saturation to linear regions [2,3]. In this paper we report a physically based continuous analytical model for SO1 MOSFETs that is represented by a single drain current equation valid
in all regions of device operation of interest, similar to the bulk (conventional) MOSFET model [4],

where W and L are the device effective or electrical width and length, respectively, ps is the bias
dependent inversion layer carrier mobility, ld is the channel length modulation (CLM)factor, 6, is
the bias dependent carrier velocity saturation factor, vsat is the carrier saturation velocity, and Vgsr
and v d s x are smoothing functions for the gate and drain voltages, Vgs and V d s , respectively. The
model takes into account all short channel effects such as sourceldrain resistance Rt through the ps
term, drain-induced barrier lowering through threshold voltage V t h , bias dependent carrier velocity
relation, channel length modulation, and impact ionization effect that explains increase in drain
current a t high fields. Only simple modifications to the bulk model in terms of device threshold
voltage and bulk charge ( I QB I - N ~ t , i ) are needed to model fully depleted SO1 MOSFETs.
It is well-known that SO1 devices suffer from self-heating because of the low thermal conductivity of the buried oxide (100 times lower than silicon) [5]. For 0.35 pm SO1 technology, temperature can rise by more than 100 'C over ambient under typical static bias conditions [6]. Self-heating
results in a decrease in the carrier mobility due to increased temperature. Other physical and
device parameters that are affected by self-heating are device flatband voltage and carrier velocity
saturation. Self-heating is included in the present model by allowing the temperature to change
linearly with power dissipation (I.V) a t each bias point. If Tois the ambient temperature a t which
static characteristics are being measured, the operating temperature T can be expressed as 161:
T = To+ O d d s v d s
(2)
where Ob is the parameter which can be determined from direct measurements of device I-V data.
The temperature dependences in the model are accounted for by including a linear temperature
dependence for VFBand u,,t and the standard exponential dependence of mobility [7]. The
temperature dependences are extracted from SO1 device data and are found to be quite close to bulk
values for similar gate oxide and channel doping, ~ F B ( T ) ~ V F B ( ~ ~ ) -u,at(T)=vsat(To)(~.~X~~~~
(2.3~1
03)T and po(T)=~o(To)(T/To)-l.
7. By incorporating Eq. (2) and the temperature dependent
parameters into Eq. (I), the procedure used t o fit the measured data is the same as used for bulk
MOSFETs [7]. The only additional SOI-specific parameter is Ob.
The measured (symbols) and calculated (continuous lines) I-V data in subthreshold and
saturation regions are shown in Figs. 1-3. Excellent fits (with an average error of 3%) are obtained
with one set of device parameters for effective channel lengths ranging from 0.25 pm to 4.5 pm. It is
interesting to note that the extracted value of v,,t for electrons was 7 . 6 ~ 1 0VIS
~ which is what we
find for bulk devices (41. Therefore, v,,t could be fixed to its typical value without loss of accuracy.
Note that the model is continuous in all regions of operation and the subthreshold behavior is
modeled very well.
Once the model parameters are fitted, ambient temperature I-V characteristics appropriate
for circuit simulation can be calculated. Although the dynamic response of the self-heating effect
includes a distributed thermal circuit with ssveral time constants [B], the dominant time constant
94CH35722

~~,

20

that affects the drain current has been reported as 100 ns-1 ps [9-111.Our own measurements
show that the time constant is on the order of 150-250 ns and is dependent on power dissipation
(Fig. 4). For most typical digital circuits, devices are only dissipating power during a switching
event. The maximum time a device is "on" is about 1/10 of the clock cycle. For sub-0.5 pm
technologies with clock cycles of 50 MHz or above, this translates to 2 ns or less. Hence, during
circuit operation, the device temperature can be well-approximated as a constant temperature,
which can be estimated from the average power dissipation as in any bulk circuit. In the model
presented above, constant temperature characteristics can be extracted by setting 6b = 0 as shown
in the dashed lines in Figs. 2 and 3. Using this procedure, ambient temperature I-V characteristics
for fully-depleted SO1 MOSFETs can be accurately modeled from the static I-V characteristics. The
strength of this model or fully-depleted SO1 lies in the fact. that only very minor modifications to the
conventional parameter extraction routines for bulk MOSFETs are needed.
Acknowledgements: The authors gratefully acknowledge IBIS Corp. for the SIMOX wafers used
in this study. This work was supported by SRC under contract 93-SC-309.L. Su acknowledges the
support of AT&T Bell Labs through an academic fellowship.
References:
[l] J.P. Colinge, IEDMTech. Digest, p. 817, 1989.
(21 S.Veeraghavan and J. Fossum, IEEE Trans. on Electron
Deu., p. 446, 1985.
[3JT. Hsiao et al., Electron Dew Lett., p. 45, 1994.
[4] N.D. Arora et al., IEEE Trans. Electron Deu., June 1994.
[5] L.J. McDaid et al., Electronics Lett., p. 828, 1989.

[6]L.T. S u e t al., IEEE Truns. Electron Deu., p. 69, 1994.

[7] N.D. Arora, MOSFET Modeling for VLSI Circuit
Simulation: Theory and Practice, 1993.
181 A. Caviglia and A. Iliadis, EZectron Deu. Lett., p. 133, 1993.
[SI N. Yasuda et al., Japan. J. Appl. Physics, p. 3677, 1991.
[lo] M. Lee et al., Proc. Int. SOI Conference, p. 151, 1993.
[ l l ] D. Yachou et al., Roc. Int. SO1 Conference, p. 148, 1993.

GATE VOLTAGE, VGs (V)

0.5

1
1.5
DRAIN VOLTAGE, V,

2.5

ID-VD characteristics from measurement (solid

(V)

F i g u r e 1. Subthreshold characteristics from measurement Figure 2.

(lines) and model (symbols), tsiz6.5 nm, tbox=360 nm.
lines), model (symbols), L,ffO.5 Fm, VG: 0.5-3 in 0.5 V steps.
Dashed lines are constant temperature curves with %=O

30

s 10
0

0.5

1.5

DRAIN VOLTAGE, Vm

(V)

2.5

B:Sol,

VG=4 V, V 5 4 V

c: sol.

v,=4

v, V F 2 v

D: Sol, V,=l

V. V =I V

D
3~10.~
1 ~ 1 0 2x10.'
.~

4 ~ 1 0 5' ~~ 1 0 .6~~ 1 0 ~ ~ 7 x 1 0 ~ ~

TIME (s)

F i g u r e 3. I D - ~ D
characteristics from measurement (solid Figure 4. Transient drain current measurements for an SO1
lines), model (symbols), L,.f0.25 pm, VG: 0.5-3 in 0.5 v steps. device a t various power dissipations and a bulk device for
Dashed lines are constant temp-erature curves with eb=o.
comparison.