Bias-Induced Healing of $V_{\text {min}}$ Failures in Advanced SRAM Arrays

A novel bias-induced healing of address specific failing bits in VLSI SRAM functional arrays is demonstrated for the first time in advanced CMOS nodes. Aging effects due to bias temperature instability (BTI) resulting in device shifts are a well-known reliability problem in advanced CMOS technologies. We propose and demonstrate a method of exploiting the BTI mechanism and the addressing capability of SRAM to recover bits that fail during stress. Recovery of failures using this method is demonstrated in both 20- and 14-nm technology nodes in VLSI SRAM arrays. This method introduces the possibility of self-healing SRAM arrays and overcomes many of the limitations of the conventional industry voltage-guard-band approach.