Building-in reliability during library development: Hot-carrier degradation is no longer a problem of the technologists only!

Abstract Based on experimentally obtained data on different 0.35-μm CMOS technologies, hot-carrier (HC) degradation is shown to be one of the most critical reliability issues of this technology generation. By scaling the dimensions without scaling the power supply voltage, the transistor HC lifetime has decreased so severely that the conventional design-independent HC reliability requirements are no longer fulfilled. Therefore, the transistor HC performance needs to be taken into account already during the development of the standard library cells. In this paper, a case study will be presented that shows that building-in reliability during library developmen can relax the HC requirements during process qualification significantly while maintaining the product reliability.