[paper] RTN of a 28-nm Cryogenic MOSFET

HeeBong Yang, Marcel Robitaille, Xuesong Chen, Hazem Elgabra, Lan Wei, Na Young Kim

Random Telegraph Noise of a 28-nm Cryogenic MOSFET in the Coulomb Blockade Regime

IEEE Electron Device Letters, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 5-8, Jan. 2022

DOI: 10.1109/LED.2021.3132964.

  

* Institute for Quantum Computing, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (CA)

Abstract: We observe rich phenomena of two-level random telegraph noise (RTN) from a commercial bulk 28-nm p-MOSFET (PMOS) near threshold at 14 K, where a Coulomb blockade (CB) hump arises from a quantum dot (QD) formed in the channel. Minimum RTN is observed at the CB hump where the high-current RTN level dramatically switches to the low-current level. The gate-voltage dependence of the RTN amplitude and power spectral density match well with the transconductance from the DC transfer curve in the CB hump region. Our work unequivocally captures these QD transport signatures in both current and noise, revealing quantum confinement effects in commercial short-channel PMOS even at 14 K, over 100 times higher than the typical dilution refrigerator temperatures of QD experiments (< 100 mK). We envision that our reported RTN characteristics rooted from the QD and a defect trap would be more prominent for smaller technology nodes, where the quantum effect should be carefully examined in cryogenic CMOS circuit designs.

Fig: (a) The trapping behaviors are illustrated with empty trap (solid line) and occupied trap (dashed line) across the hump area of the |ID| -|VGS| sweep. (b) The current power spectral density (PSD) of the discretized data with the 1/f2 PSD guideline in red.

Acknowledgment: J. Watt and C. Chen in Intel for samples, A. Malcolm for early work, and J.Baugh for helpful discussions are appreciated.