CMOS Electronics
How It Works, How It Fails

CMOS manufacturing environments are surrounded with symptoms that can indicate serious test, design, or reliability problems, which, in turn, can affect the financial as well as the engineering bottom line. This book educates readers, including non-engineers involved in CMOS manufacture, to identify and remedy these causes. This book instills the electronic knowledge that affects not just design but other important areas of manufacturing such as test, reliability, failure analysis, yield-quality issues, and problems.

Designed specifically for the many non-electronic engineers employed in the semiconductor industry who need to reliably manufacture chips at a high rate in large quantities, this is a practical guide to how CMOS electronics work, how failures occur, and how to diagnose and avoid them.

Key features:

• Builds a grasp of the basic electronics of CMOS integrated circuits and then leads the reader further to understand the mechanisms of failure.
• Unique descriptions of circuit failure mechanisms, some found previously only in research papers and others new to this publication.
• Targeted to the CMOS industry (or students headed there) and not a generic introduction to the broader field of electronics.
• Examples, exercises, and problems are provided to support the self-instruction of the reader.

Foreword.

Preface.

PART I: CMOS FUNDAMENTALS.

1Electrical Circuit Analysis.

1.1 Introduction.

1.2 Voltage and Current Laws.

1.3 Capacitors.

1.4 Diodes.

1.5 Summary.

Bibliography.

Exercises.

2 Semiconductor Physics.

2.1 Semiconductor Fundamentals.

2.2 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Semiconductors.

2.3 Carrier Transport in Semiconductors.

2.4 The pn Junction.

2.5 Biasing the pn Junction: I–V Characteristics.

2.6 Parasitics in the Diode.

2.7 Summary.

Bibliography.

Exercises.

3 MOSFET Transistors.

3.1 Principles of Operation: Long-Channel Transistors.

3.2 Threshold Voltage in MOS Transistors.

3.3 Parasitic Capacitors in MOS Transistors.

3.4 Device Scaling: Short-Channel MOS Transistors.

3.5 Summary.

References.

Exercises.

4 CMOS Basic Gates.

4.1 Introduction.

4.2 The CMOS Inverter.

4.3 NAND Gates.

4.4 NOR Gates.

4.5 CMOS Transmission Gates.

4.6 Summary.

Bibliography.

Exercises.

5 CMOS Basic Circuits.

5.1 Combinational logic.

5.2 Sequential Logic.

5.3 Input–Output (I/O) Circuitry.

5.4 Summary.

References.

Exercises.

PART II FAILURE MODES, DEFECTS, AND TESTING OF CMOS Ics.

6 Failure Mechanisms in CMOS IC Materials.

6.1 Introduction.

6.2 Materials Science of IC Metals.

6.3 Metal Failure Modes.

6.4 Oxide Failure Modes.

6.5 Conclusion.

Acknowledgments.

Bibliography.

Exercises.

7 Bridging Defects.

7.1 Introduction.

7.2 Bridges in ICs: Critical Resistance and Modeling.

7.3 Gate Oxide Shorts (GOS).

7.4 Bridges in Combinational Circuits.

7.5 Bridges in Sequential Circuits.

7.6 Bridging Faults and Technology Scaling.

7.7 Conclusion.

References.

Exercises.

8 Open Defects.

8.1 Introduction.

8.2 Modeling Floating Nodes in ICs.

8.3 Open Defect Classes.

8.4 Summary.

References.

Exercises.

9 Parametric Failures.

9.1 Introduction.

9.2 Intrinsic Parametric Failures.

9.3 Intrinsic Parametric Failure Impact on IC Behavior.

9.4 Extrinsic Parametric Failure.

9.5 Conclusion.

References.

Exercises.

10 Defect-Based Testing.

10.1 Introduction.

10.2 Digital IC Testing: The Basics.

10.3 Design for Test.

10.4 Defect-Based Testing (DBT).

10.5 Testing Nanometer ICs.

10.6 Conclusions.

Bibliography.

References.

Exercises.

Appendix A:Solutions to Self-Exercises.

A.1 Chapter 1.

A.2 Chapter 3.

A.3 Chapter 4.

A.4 Chapter 5.

A.5 Chapter 6.

A.6 Chapter 7.

A.8 Chapter 8.

A.8 Chapter 10.

Index.

About the Authors.

JAUME SEGURA, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Balearic Islands University, Spain, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1993. He has been a visiting researcher at Philips Semiconductors and Intel Corporation, working on design and test issues. He is a member of the IEEE, the Chairman of the IEEE-CAS Spanish Chapter, and serves on the technical program committees of such conferences as ITC, DATE, and VTS.

CHARLES F. HAWKINS, PhD, is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1972. He is also a research contract engineer with the Sandia National Laboratories IC Group and has consulted with Intel Corporation, AMD Corporation, and Philips Research Labs on issues of quality, reliability, testability research, and testing. Professor Hawkins is a Member of IEEE and a member of the Electronic Device Failure Analysis Society (EDFAS) of ASM, as well as the editor of EDFAS Magazine. Professor Hawkins frequently teaches short courses and industrial seminars to leading chip manufacturers worldwide.