A 65nm CMOS SOC Technology Featuring Strained Silicon Transistors for RF Applications

Record breaking RF performance was recently achieved on a 65nm CMOS technology (29nm L
_gate
, 210nm pitch) employing uni-axial strained silicon transistors. These highest-reported cutoff frequencies for NMOS transistors achieve f
_T
/f
_MAX
values of 360 GHz/420 GHz. PMOS transistors also demonstrate superior performance with f
_T
/f
_MAX
values of 238 GHz/295 GHz. Varactor performance on this substrate technology is also discussed