Self-Heating Assessment on Bulk FinFET Devices Through Characterization and Predictive Simulation

This paper describes three different measurement methodologies for the electrical characterization of FinFET self-heating at wafer-level. Finite element simulations of heat transport are used to interpret heater-sensor temperature gradients and validate the measurements. The different sensor types were designed to use the threshold voltage (V
_T
) of an adjacent FET, the forward bias (V
_D
) of an adjacent pn-junction or the gate resistance (R
_G
) of the device itself. We report that self-heating is underestimated by 35% when sensed at a neighboring device. We also confirm that heat from local and surrounding sources are additive.