TCAD-based methodology for reliability assessment of nanoscaled MOSFETs

The microelectronics industry faces important challenges in reducing technology development and circuit design times. This advocates the use of TCAD approaches to co-optimize circuits and device development. This paper presents the process of calibrating pMOSFET TCAD simulations against measured devices starting with the physical structure, and the doping distribution and achieving good matching of the statistical variability and Random Telegraph Noise (RTN) measurements. The investigated device has been fabricated and characterized by IMEC, while Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) TCAD tools are used to accomplish this task. The calibration includes different channel lengths and widths to capture properly the scaling trends and to match the measured variability and reliability behaviour.