Monitoring and Managing Transistor Aging in Nanoscale Circuits and Systems

该项目的重点是集成电路（IC）以及如何使用纳米级技术继续大规模制造IC，并在较长时间内继续产生可靠和可预测的性能。晶体管构成了所有集成电路的基本构建模块，因此也构成了所有基于计算机的系统以及当今几乎所有应用和环境中的所有其他基于电子的系统。越来越困难的一个问题是，由于非常精细的特征尺寸（在纳米范围内），晶体管显著地遭受老化-物理性质的退化。老化引起可靠性问题，该问题成为集成电路的寿命性能和可靠性的限制因素。 晶体管老化影响的一个密切相关的方面是可持续性（环境和财务）。 随着加速退化，集成电路的寿命将显著缩短，导致消费者和工业设备将需要以更快的速度被替换，并且因此以更高的环境影响足迹和更高的总成本来实现预期或所需的功能和性能。 诸如负偏置温度不稳定性（NBTI）和热载流子注入（HCI）的老化机制影响平面和新兴的3D半导体技术（例如，FinFET）。自加热是晶体管参数退化的主要原因，并且预计在3D纳米和宏观结构中会加剧，其中在正常操作期间积累的热量具有较少的逃逸路径。新颖的3D晶体管（例如，三栅极、FinFET）已知会受到自加热的不利影响。这种现象在宏观层面上转化为3D IC更容易受到性能损失和故障的影响。老化会影响晶体管的阈值电压，并可能导致性能下降或设备或系统的彻底故障。阈值电压退化导致由时序故障、读/写存储器故障以及模拟和数字电路的功能中的其他不期望的变化引起的故障。 因此，建模、监控、预测和缓解晶体管老化的能力对于半导体行业至关重要，以便设计、制造和商业化具有可接受和可预测可靠性水平的高性能IC。该项目旨在开发这种模型，通过实验验证它们，并创造能够减轻晶体管老化的技术。 我们不仅有兴趣了解老化机制并为其开发准确的模型，而且我们还对在IC的实际设计过程中有效使用这些模型感兴趣。目前关于晶体管老化的工作集中在通过布局和电路级解决方案对老化的影响进行建模、感测和补偿。提出的研究的目标之一是开发模型和技术，通过实际的老化逆转，通过逆转的方向（偏置）的应力，加速与在线控制退火机制的帮助下，老化恢复。其好处在于能够延长集成电路的寿命，这在广泛的应用中至关重要，包括数据中心的存储库，医疗设备，太空任务，环境和工业控制和监控，汽车和航空航天以及云计算。 该项目将推进半导体和集成电路领域的知识，特别是。它将为加拿大工业服务，因为该项目旨在促进计算机和电子系统的随时可用（低成本），但随着时间的推移也保持可靠和可靠。

This project is focused on integrated circuits (ICs) and how ICs can continue to be fabricated in mass volumes using nanoscale technologies, and continue to yield reliable and predictable performance over extended periods of time. Transistors form the fundamental building blocks of all integrated circuits, and thereby all computer-based systems, and all other electronic-based systems found in just about every application and environment today. One problem that is increasingly difficult is that due to the very fine feature size (in nanometer range), transistors suffer significantly from aging – degradation of physical properties. Aging causes a reliability problem that becomes a limiting factor of lifetime performance and dependability of integrated circuits. A closely related aspect that transistor aging affects is sustainability (environmental and financial). With accelerating degradation, the life-time of integrated circuits will significantly shorten, leading to consumer and industrial devices that will need to be replaced at a faster pace, and therefore at a higher environmental impact footprint and at a higher overall cost for achieving an expected or required functionality and performance. Aging mechanisms such as negative bias temperature instability (NBTI), and hot carrier injection (HCI), affect both planar and emerging 3D semiconductor technologies (e.g., FinFETs). Self-heating is a leading cause of transistor parameter degradation, and is expected to aggravate in 3D nano- and macro-level structures, where heat accumulated during normal operation has fewer escape paths. Novel 3D transistors (e.g., tri-gate, FinFET) are already known to be adversely affected by self-heating. This phenomenon translates at the macro-level to 3D ICs being more susceptible to performance loss and malfunctions. Aging affects transistor threshold voltages and can lead to performance degradation or outright malfunctions of devices or systems. Threshold voltage degradation causes malfunctions arising from timing faults, read/write memory faults, and other undesirable changes in the functioning of analog and digital circuits. So the capacity to model, monitor, predict, and alleviate transistor aging is essential for the semiconductor industry in order to design, fabricate, and commercialize high performance ICs with an acceptable and predictable level of reliability. This project aims to develop such models, to validate them experimentally, and to create technology able to alleviate transistor aging. Not only are we interested in pursuing the aspects of understanding the aging mechanisms and developing accurate models for them, but we are also interested in the effective use of such models in the actual design process of ICs. Current work on transistor aging has focused on modeling, sensing, and compensating the effects of aging through layout and circuit level solutions. One of the goals of the proposed research is to develop models and techniques for aging recovery through actual aging reversal by reversing the direction (bias) of stress, accelerated with the help on-line controlled annealing mechanisms. The benefits will lie in the ability to extend the life of integrated circuits, which is critical in a wide range of applications including memory banks in data centers, medical devices, space missions, environmental and industrial control and monitoring, automotive and aerospace, and cloud computing. This project will advance knowledge in the field of semiconductors and integrated circuits in particular. It will serve Canadian industry in that the project aims to contribute to making computer and electronic-based systems readily available (low cost) but also remain reliable and dependable over time.