Device and circuit level suppression techniques for random-dopant-induced static noise margin fluctuation in 16-nm-gate SRAM cell

Abstract

In this study, a three-dimensional "atomistic" coupled device-circuit simulation is performed to explore the impact of process-variation-effect (PVE) and random-dopant-fluctuation (RDF) on static noise margin (SNM) of 16-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) static random access memory (SRAM) cells. Fluctuation suppression approaches, based on circuit and device viewpoints, are further implemented to examine the associated characteristics in 16-nm-gate SRAM cells. From the circuit viewpoint, the SNM of 8T planar SRAM is enlarged to 230 mV and the variation of SNM (sigma(SNM)) is reduced to 22 mV at a cost of 30% extra chip area. As for device level improvement, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) FinFETs replaced the planar MOSFETs in 6T SRAM is further examined. The SNM of 6T SOI FinFETs SRAM is 125 mV and the sigma(SNM) is suppressed significantly to 5.4 mV. However, development of fabrication process for SOI FinFET SRAM is crucial for sub-22 nm technology era. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.