As the manufacturing process is scaled down to the nanoscale, the aging phenomenon significantly affects the reliability and lifetime of integrated circuits. Consequently, the precise measurement of digital CMOS aging...As the manufacturing process is scaled down to the nanoscale, the aging phenomenon significantly affects the reliability and lifetime of integrated circuits. Consequently, the precise measurement of digital CMOS aging is a key aspect of nanoscale aging tolerant circuit design. This paper proposes a high accuracy digital aging monitor using phase-locked loop and voltage-controlled oscillator(PLL-VCO) circuit. The proposed monitor eliminates the circuit self-aging effect for the characteristic of PLL, whose frequency has no relationship with circuit aging phenomenon. The PLL-VCO monitor is implemented in TSMC low power 65 nm CMOS technology, and its area occupies 303.28×298.94 μm^2. After accelerating aging tests, the experimental results show that PLL-VCO monitor improves accuracy about high temperature by 2.4% and high voltage by 18.7%.展开更多
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.61274132,61404076)the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China(No.LQ14F040001)+2 种基金the Scientific Research Fund of Zhejiang Provincial Education Department(No.Y201430798)the Subject Fund of Ningbo University(Nos.XKL141037,XYL14001)the K.C.Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University,China
文摘As the manufacturing process is scaled down to the nanoscale, the aging phenomenon significantly affects the reliability and lifetime of integrated circuits. Consequently, the precise measurement of digital CMOS aging is a key aspect of nanoscale aging tolerant circuit design. This paper proposes a high accuracy digital aging monitor using phase-locked loop and voltage-controlled oscillator(PLL-VCO) circuit. The proposed monitor eliminates the circuit self-aging effect for the characteristic of PLL, whose frequency has no relationship with circuit aging phenomenon. The PLL-VCO monitor is implemented in TSMC low power 65 nm CMOS technology, and its area occupies 303.28×298.94 μm^2. After accelerating aging tests, the experimental results show that PLL-VCO monitor improves accuracy about high temperature by 2.4% and high voltage by 18.7%.