Circuit-based reliability consideration in FinFET technology

The continuous scaling of device dimension and the introduction of FinFET technology has led to new reliability concerns, such as Bias Temperature Instability (BTI), Stress-Induced Leakage Current (SILC), Self-Heat Effect (SHE) and Time Dependent Junction degradation (TDJD). These reliability issues become process and design bottle neck for the advanced technology development because of their stringent process requirements and the device trade-off. In this paper, we introduced the circuit-based reliability consideration to assess the practical circuit reliability limitation that closes to the real product usage. The circuit-based reliability consideration contains dynamic AC reliability environment, low percentile reliability prediction through Monte-Carlo Simulation on transistor-based TDDB model, and power consumption leakage consideration in dealing with the junction degradation, as well as the FinFET self-heat effect impact on on-state TDDB under static DC and dynamic AC stress. Through this study, we demonstrated that circuit-based reliability model, established from the transistor-based reliability evaluation, can be used realistically in assessing product reliability down to their use conditions.