Mechanism Analysis and Thermal Damage Prediction of High-Power Microwave Radiated CMOS Circuits

Abstract

The reliability of the integrated circuits (ICs) has become one of the greatest challenges with the increasing complexity of the electromagnetic environment. On this basis, an explicit difference in the damage location is observed in the high-power microwave (HPM) radiated CMOS inverters. The detailed damage mechanism analysis is performed. The analysis shows that the overcurrent-dominant failure and the latch-up-dominant failure are induced in positive and negative half radiation cycle respectively, resulting in the damage location discrepancy. The depletion region current <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I_{\textrm {SS}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and the body current <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$I_{\textrm {body}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are derived from the established theoretical charge transport model. TCAD simulations demonstrate the junctional-overcurrent and latch-up process, empirical formula is obtained to explain the damage mechanism and predict the thermal damage location. The damage dependency on interference characteristics is discussed for further understanding. Corresponding experiments are performed using the six-integrated-inverters chip. The results support the theoretical charge transport model well.