MOS Devices for Low-Voltage and Low-Energy Applications

Yasuhisa Omura, Abhijit Mallik, Naoto Matsuo

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781119107354
• eBook ISBN: 9781119107385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Helps readers understand the physics behind MOS devices for low-voltage and low-energy applications

• Based on timely published and unpublished work written by expert authors
• Discusses various promising MOS devices applicable to low-energy environmental and biomedical uses
• Describes the physical effects (quantum, tunneling) of MOS devices
• Demonstrates the performance of devices, helping readers to choose right devices applicable to an industrial or consumer environment
• Addresses some Ge-based devices and other compound-material-based devices for high-frequency applications and future development of high performance devices.

"Seemingly innocuous everyday devices such as smartphones, tablets and services such as on-line gaming or internet keyword searches consume vast amounts of energy. Even when in standby mode, all these devices consume energy. The upcoming 'Internet of Things' (IoT) is expected to deploy 60 billion electronic devices spread out in our homes, cars and cities.

Britain is already consuming up to 16 per cent of all its power through internet use and this rate is doubling every four years. According to The UK's Daily Mail May (2015), if usage rates continue, all of Britain's power supply could be consumed by internet use in just 20 years. In 2013, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, corresponding to the power generated by seventeen 1000-megawatt nuclear power plants. Data center electricity consumption is projected to increase to roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2020, the equivalent annual output of 50 nuclear power plants."
— Natural Resources Defense Council, USA, Feb. 2015

All these examples stress the urgent need for developing electronic devices that consume as little energy as possible. The book "MOS Devices for Low-Voltage and Low-Energy Applications" explores the different transistor options that can be utilized to achieve that goal. It describes in detail the physics and performance of transistors that can be operated at low voltage and consume little power, such as subthreshold operation in bulk transistors, fully depleted SOI devices, tunnel FETs, multigate and gate-all-around MOSFETs. Examples of low-energy circuits making use of these devices are given as well.

"The book MOS Devices for Low-Voltage and Low-Energy Applications is a good reference for graduate students, researchers, semiconductor and electrical engineers who will design the electronic systems of tomorrow."
— Dr. Jean-Pierre Colinge, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)

"The authors present a creative way to show how different MOS devices can be used for low-voltage and low-power applications. They start with Bulk MOSFET, following with SOI MOSFET, FinFET, gate-all-around MOSFET, Tunnel-FET and others. It is presented the physics behind the devices, models, simulations, experimental results and applications. This book is interesting for researchers, graduate and undergraduate students. The low-energy field is an important topic for integrated circuits in the future and none can stay out of this."
— Prof. Joao A. Martino, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Part I
INTRODUCTION TO LOW-VOLTAGE AND LOW-ENERGY DEVICES

1
Why Are Low-Voltage and Low-Energy Devices Desired?

The original scaling rule [1] indicated that the dissipation power density (W/cm²) of an integrated circuit is not changed by scaling [1, 2]. However, this guideline is only really applicable to DRAM devices. In most integrated circuits, the supply voltage is not scaled according to the designer’s intent, and devices have faced negative impacts, such as hot-carrier phenomena [3] and negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) phenomena [4], due to high supply voltages [5]. In the twentieth century, central processing unit (CPU) revealed dramatic advances in device performance (high-speed signal processing with increases in data bit length), and the guideline seemed to be ignored (see http://www.depi.itch.edu.mx/apacheco/asm/Intel_cpus.htm, accessed May 18, 2016).

However, in the 1990s, CPU designers noticed the limitations of CPU cooling efficiency, which triggered an urgent and ongoing discussion of low-power device technology. The following possible solutions have been proposed:

• the introduction of a silicon-on-insulator integrated circuit (SOI IC) strategy based on advanced substrate technology [6];
• a multicore strategy [7];
• a low-voltage strategy [8].

These major strategic proposals have led the worldwide electronics industry to the Internet of Things.

Business opportunities based on information technology have increased in the real world without taking account of the issues raised by technologies such as cloud computing [9] and datacenter construction (see http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/, accessed May 18, 2016), which have rapidly increased global energy consumption [10]. We must propose viable and innovative ideas on semiconductor device technologies to suppress such global-warming factors.

Information technology has widened perspectives on improving the quality of our future social life. Many companies are creating highly desirable products in the field of sensing technology, such as house monitoring (temperature, humidity, air pollution, fire, human health, security), office monitoring (temperature, humidity, air pollution, fire, security), traffic monitoring (for aspects such as car speed, traffic jams, and accidents), agriculture monitoring (for temperature, humidity, air pollution, rain, wind, lighting, storms), space monitoring (moon, sun, stars, meteorites, and other astronomical phenomena), defense monitoring, and so on. Many of these products use dry batteries or solar power/batteries for 24-hour monitoring. In the case of portable equipment, large batteries are impractical, which has triggered the development of small batteries with high energy density. This is also applicable to cellular phones and smart phones [11].

In battery-powered sensing devices, the battery volume must be small. This may be achieved by lowering the supply voltage, which in turn reduces the battery energy as it is proportional to the square of the voltage. Hence, it is more important to reduce the dissipation energy than the dissipation power for sensing devices. This will be addressed again later. We must, therefore, contribute to the solution of urgent social problems by proposing low-energy devices and integrated circuits.

References

1. [1] R. H. Dennard, F. H. Gaensslen, H.-N. Yu, V. L. Rideout, E. Bassous, and A. R. LeBlanc, “Design of ion implanted MOSFETs with very small physical dimensions,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. SC-9, pp. 256–268, 1974.
2. [2] P. K. Chatterjee, W. R. Hunter, T. C. Holloway, and Y. T. Lin, “The impact of scaling laws on the choice of N-channel or P-channel for MOS VLSI,” IEEE Electron Device Lett., vol. EDL-1, pp. 220–223, 1980.
3. [3] T. H. Ning, “Hot-electron emission from silicon into silicon dioxide,” Solid-State Electron., vol. 21, pp. 273–282, 1978.
4. [4] D. K. Schroder and J. A. Babcock, “Negative bias temperature instability: road to cross in deep submicron silicon semiconductor manufacturing,” J. Appl. Phys., vol. 94, pp. 1–18, 2003.
5. [5] B. Kaczer, R. Degraeve, M. Rasras, K. Van de Mieroop, P. J. Roussel, and G. Groeseneken, “Imp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: INTRODUCTION TO LOW-VOLTAGE AND LOW-ENERGY DEVICES
• Part II: SUMMARY OF PHYSICS OF MODERN SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES
• Part III: POTENTIAL OF CONVENTIONAL BULK MOSFETs
• Part IV: POTENTIAL OF FULLY-DEPLETED SOI MOSFETs
• Part V: POTENTIAL OF PARTIALLY DEPLETED SOI MOSFETs
• Part VI: QUANTUM EFFECTS AND APPLICATIONS – 1
• Part VII: QUANTUM EFFECTS AND APPLICATIONS – 2
• Part VIII: PROSPECTS OF LOW-ENERGY DEVICE TECHNOLOLGY AND APPLICATIONS
• Bibliography
• Index
• End User License Agreement