Impact of NBTI and PBTI in SRAM bit-cells: Relative sensitivities and guidelines for application-specific target stability/performance

The stability and performance characteristics of static random access memories (SRAMs) are known to degrade with time due to the impact of negative and positive bias temperature instabilities (NBTI (in PFET) and PBTI (in NFET)). In this work, we provide insights into relative sensitivities of these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2009 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium pp. 745 - 749
Main Authors Bansal, A., Rao, R., Jae-Joon Kim, Zafar, S., Stathis, J.H., Ching-Te Chuang
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.04.2009
Subjects
Circuits
Degradation
FETs
Guidelines
Niobium compounds
Random access memory
Space technology
Stability
Thermal stresses
Titanium compounds
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Summary:The stability and performance characteristics of static random access memories (SRAMs) are known to degrade with time due to the impact of negative and positive bias temperature instabilities (NBTI (in PFET) and PBTI (in NFET)). In this work, we provide insights into relative sensitivities of these phenomena on speed and stability of SRAM cells. Relative impact on access time, stability, and tolerability of one phenomenon over another has been studied for different application specific (high-performance or low-power) SRAM cells. We show that high-performance SRAM cells should have lower VT drift due to PBTI compared with dense cells to contain read stability and access time. Further, worst-case static stress poses tighter process constraints compared with alternating stress.
ISBN:9781424428885
1424428882
ISSN:1541-7026
1938-1891
DOI:10.1109/IRPS.2009.5173342