Self-Heating Effects on Hot Carrier Degradation and its Impact on Ring-Oscillator Reliability

Abstract

This paper discusses the impact of self-heating (SH) on ring-oscillator (RO) reliability and its correlation to hot carrier (HC) degradation. We show that HC degradation modulation due to SH is only significant for logic PFETs at highly accelerated conditions. We show that these SH effects on HC are greatly reduced at moderate acceleration. By stressing the ROs at extreme conditions, we show that the SH impact on HC does not affect RO degradation.