IIT Bombay used Agilent’s Waveform Generator/Fast Measurement Unit for research

Agilent Technologies has announced that the Agilent B1530 Waveform Generator/Fast Measurement Unit (WGFMU) was used by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay to make ultrafast measurements of negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) degradation in deeply scaled high-K metal gate (HKMG) CMOS devices for a wide variety of DC and AC stress tests.

IIT Bombay presented the findings of its research in a paper delivered this week at the IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium in Hawaii. The Agilent-supported lab at IIT Bombay included usage of ab-initio modelling.

NBTI is a serious reliability concern and affects the performance of CMOS IC chips used in electronic products such as laptops, tablets and cell phones. The phenomenon degrades the performance of transistors, the basic logic elements inside semiconductor ICs.

“NBTI is a serious reliability concern for scaled CMOS technologies. Because of the availability of the Agilent B1530 and the WGFMU capability in Agilent-IIT device characterization lab, IIT Bombay could make ultrafast measurements of BTI degradation in deeply scaled HKMG devices for both DC and AC stress. We are extremely proud to be associated with such important research,” said Sudhir Tangri, Agilent India Country Manager, Electronic Measurement Group.

The unique data collected helped the researchers at IIT Bombay develop a robust model for predicting NBTI induced CMOS device degradation 1) during and after DC stress at different operating bias and temperature, and 2) during AC stress at different operating bias, temperature, pulse duty cycle and frequency. Calibrated model parameters are obtained, which are used for reliable estimation of NBTI degradation at end of IC life under different operating conditions.