DC hot carrier stress effect on CMOS 65nm 60 GHz power amplifiers

The effects of dc hot carrier stress on the characteristics of 60GHz power amplifiers on CMOS 65nm are investigated. The increase in the threshold voltage, the decrease in the transconductance and the output conductance of the MOSFETs caused by hot carriers leads to a loss performances of the PAs. A reliability study is first made on a 1 stage PA to validate the ageing model and the degradation explanation. A drop of 5% the gain, 7% of the OCP
_1dB
, 7% of the P
_sat
are measured at 58GHz after 50 hours of stress under Vdd=1.7V on a 4 stages amplifier.