skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • Optimal Accelerated Test Regions for Time- Dependent Dielectric Breakdown Lifetime Parameters Estimation in FinFET Technology
Title: Optimal Accelerated Test Regions for Time- Dependent Dielectric Breakdown Lifetime Parameters Estimation in FinFET Technology
This paper proposes a methodology to find optimal accelerated test regions for lifetime parameter estimation for not only the traditional reliability concern, frontend-of-line dielectric breakdown (FEOL TDDB), but also the newly emerging wearout mechanism, middle-of-line time dependent dielectric breakdown (MOL TDDB) in 14nm FinFET technology. The framework to find the optimal test regions is introduced; the error estimating methodology is discussed in detail. Three digital circuits are presented for evaluation and comparison. The optimal test regions depend on the circuit size as well as the types of standard cells in the circuits. To ensure accurate lifetime parameter estimation, both error from sampling and error from selectivity should be considered at the same time. As a general guideline, higher estimation accuracy will be achieved by testing gate TDDB lifetime parameters at higher voltages, while testing middle-of-line TDDB at higher temperatures.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1700914
PAR ID:
10104486
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Design of Circuits and Integrated Systems
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 6
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; (, Design of Circuits and Integrated Systems)
    Advanced FinFET SRAMs undergo reliability degradation due to various front-end and back-end wearout mechanisms. The design of reliable SRAMs benefits from accurate wearout models that are calibrated by accelerated test. With respect to testing, the accelerated conditions which can help separate the dominant wearout mechanisms related to circuit failure is crucial for model calibration and reliability prediction. In this paper, the estimation of optimal accelerated test regions for a 14nm FinFET SRAM under various wearout mechanisms is presented. The dominant regions for specific mechanisms are compared and analyzed for effective testing. It is observed that for our SRAM example circuit only bias temperature instability (BTI) and middle-of-line time-dependent dielectric breakdown (MTDDB) have test regions where their failures can be isolated, while the other mechanisms can’t be extracted individually due to acceptable regions’ overlap. Meanwhile, the SRAM cell activity distribution has a small influence on test regions and selectivity. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; (, VLSI Test Symposium)
    This paper presents a lifetime simulator for both Front-End-of-Line (FEOL) time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) and the newly emerging Middle-of-Line (MOL) time dependent dielectric breakdown for FinFET technology. A lifetime assessment flow for digital circuits and microprocessors is proposed for the target wearout mechanisms, and its associated vulnerable feature extraction algorithms are discussed in detail. Our simulator incorporates the detailed electrical stress, temperature, linewidth of each standard cell within the digital circuit and microprocessor. Also, FEOL TDDB and MOL TDDB lifetimes are combined in the calculation of TDDB lifetime. Circuit designers can use the resulting lifetime information to guide and improve their circuits to make them more robust and reliable way. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; (, Design of Circuits and Integrated Systems)
    Accelerated lifetime tests are necessary for reliability evaluation of circuits and systems, but the parameters for choosing the test conditions are often unknown. Furthermore, reliability testing is generally performed on test structures that have different properties than actual circuits and systems, which may create inconsistencies in how circuits and systems work in reality. To combat this problem, we use ring oscillators, which are similar to circuits, based on the 14nm FinFET node as the circuit vehicle to extract wearout data. We explore the effects of testing time, sample size, and number of stages on the ability to detect failures for various test conditions, focusing on front-end time dependent dielectric breakdown, which is one of the most dominant wearout mechanisms. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; (, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems)
    This paper examines subset selection for nonlinear least squares parameter estimation, and applies the methodology to a test system previously studied in the power system literature, involving the on-line identification of a synchronous generator model with many parameters. Subset selection partitions the parameters into well-conditioned and ill-conditioned subsets. We show for the test system that fixing the ill-conditioned parameters to prior estimates (even if these prior estimates are substantially in error), and estimating only the remaining parameters, significantly improves the performance of the estimation algorithm and greatly enhances the quality of the estimated parameters. It is shown that attempts to estimate all of the model parameters, as done in the original work with this test system, can yield extremely unreliable results. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, Classical and Quantum Gravity)
    Abstract We develop and characterize a parameter estimation methodology for rotating core collapse supernovae based on the gravitational wave core bounce phase and real detector noise. Expanding on the evidence from numerical simulations for the deterministic nature of this gravitational wave emission and about the dependence on the ratio $$\beta$$ between rotational kinetic to potential energy, we propose an analytical model for the core bounce component which depends on $$\beta$$ and one phenomenological parameter. We validate the goodness of the model with a pool of representative waveforms. We use the fitting factor adopted in compact coalescing binary searches as a metric to quantify the goodness of the analytical model and the template bank generated by the model presents an average accuracy of 94.4\% when compared with the numerical simulations and is used as the basis for the work. The error for a matched filter frequentist parameter estimation of $$\beta$$ is evaluated. The results obtained considering real interferometric noise and a waveform at a distance of 10 kpc and optimal orientation, for one standard deviation estimation error of the rotation parameter \(\beta\) lie in the range of \(10^{-2}\) to \(10^{-3}\) as \(\beta\) increases. The results are also compared to the scenario where Gaussian recolored data is employed. The analytical model also allows for the first time, to compute theoretical minima in the error for $$\beta$$ for any type of estimator. Our analysis indicates that the presence of rotation would be detectable at 0.5 Mpc for third generation interferometers like CE or ET. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email