Design for ASIC reliability for low-temperature applications

A design for reliability methodology has been developed for electronics for low-temperature applications. A hot carrier aging (HCA) lifetime projection model is proposed to take into account the HCA impact on technology, analysis of parametric degradation versus critical circuit path degradation, transistor bias profile, transistor substrate current profile, and operating temperature profile. The most applicable transistor size can be determined in order to meet the reliability requirements of the electronics operating under low temperatures. This methodology and approach can also be applied to other transistor-level failure and/or degradation mechanisms for applications with varying temperature ranges.