Subthreshold conduction

About: Subthreshold conduction is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6343 publications have been published within this topic receiving 131957 citations. The topic is also known as: Subthreshold leakage.

A new two-dimensional model for the potential distribution of short gate-length MESFET's and its applications

Abstract: A new analytical technique for calculating the 2-D potential distribution of a MESFET device operated in the subthreshold region is proposed, in which the 2-D Poisson's equation is solved by the Green's function technique. The potential and electric-field distributions of a non-self-aligned MESFET device are calculated exactly from different types of Green's function in different boundary regions, and the sidewall potential at the interface between these regions can be determined by the continuation of the electric field at the sidewall boundary. The remarkable feature of the proposed method is that the implanted doping profile in the active channel can be treated. Furthermore, a simplified technique is developed to derive a set of quasi-analytical models for the sidewall potential at both sides of the gate edge, the threshold voltage of short gate-length devices, and the drain-induced barrier lowering. Moreover, the developed quasi-analytical models are compared with the results of 2-D numerical analysis and good agreements are obtained. >

A novel CMOS operational transconductance amplifier based on a mobility compensation technique

Abstract: This brief describes a new linear operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) and its application to a ninth-order Bessel filter. To improve the linearity of the OTA, we employ a mobility compensation circuit which combines the transistors operating in the triode and the subthreshold regions. The proposed technique enhances the linearity of the transconductance without loss of the input swing range. The proposed OTA shows /spl plusmn/0.5% Gm variation and the total harmonic distortion of less than - 60-dB over the input range of /spl plusmn/0.8-V. The ninth-order Bessel filter employing the proposed OTA has been implemented in a 0.35-/spl mu/m n-well CMOS process under 3.3-V supply voltage. It shows the cutoff frequency of 8 MHz and the power consumption of 65 mW.

Back-gate bias enhanced band-to-band tunneling leakage in scaled MOSFET's

Abstract: The drain leakage current in MOSFET's in the present standard process is separated into three distinct components: the subthreshold conduction, the surface band-to-band tunneling (BTBT), and the bulk BTBT. Each of the three shows different dependencies on back-gate bias. As a result, the bulk BTBT, increasing exponentially with increasing the magnitude of back-gate reverse bias, promptly dominates the drain leakage. Additional experiment highlights the effect of the increased bulk dopant concentrations as in next-generation scaled MOSFET's on the bulk BTBT. This sets the bulk BTBT a significant constraint to the low-voltage, low-power, high-density CMOS integrated circuits employing the back-gate reverse bias. In this work, the measured drain leakage of interest is successfully reproduced by two-dimensional (2-D) device simulation.

Low-Power Near-Threshold Design: Techniques to Improve Energy Efficiency Energy-efficient near-threshold design has been proposed to increase energy efficiency across a wid

Abstract: i»?Energy-efficient near-threshold design has been proposed to increase energy efficiency across a wide range of applications. This article first provides a background motivating near-threshold and how it differs from super-threshold and subthreshold operation. Next, state-of-the-art near-threshold techniques are summarized that help overcome barriers to near-threshold adoption, namely high variation at low voltage. Last, example industrial and academic wide-voltage scaling systems are discussed.