The impact of postbreakdown gate leakage on MOSFET RF performances

When the gate-oxide of a MOSFET breaks down, a leakage path is created between channel and gate. In this work, we demonstrate that a simple leakage current increase model can predict the impact of gate-oxide breakdown on MOSFET performance from dc to microwave frequency. We show that severe reduction in RF performance due to input/output mismatch and a gain reduction can result from gate-oxide breakdown.