A Carrier-Energy-based Compact Model for Hot-Carrier Degradation Implemented in Verilog-A

Abstract

With aggressive scaling of CMOS transistors, hot-carrier degradation (HCD) has re-emerged as a serious reliability concern. The understanding of HCD has shifted from a field-driven to a carrier-energy-driven phenomenon, where microscopic interactions among the carrier ensemble determine the damage rate. HCD models based on the energy-driven approach tend to be quite complex and computationally cumbersome, making their implementation in a circuit simulation environment very challenging. In this work, (i) we propose a compact abstraction of the HCD model built on the energy-driven paradigm, (ii) validate the model against extensive device-level measurements from a commercial CMOS technology, and (iii) implement the model in Verilog-A and demonstrate a good trade-off between physical accuracy and computational efficiency.