Performance, standby power, and manufacturability trade-off in transistor design consideration for 0.25-μm technology

Abstract

In this paper, we compare four different approaches for transistor design for the 0.25 micrometer technology from the point of view of performance, stand-by power and ease of manufacturing. For the high performance logic applications such as high end microprocessors, 0.18 micrometer transistor (L gate equals 0.18 plus or minus 0.02 micrometer) with super steep retrograde wells and halo implants but without extension implants can achieve maximum frequency of operation (F max ) exceeding 380 Mhz for the 0.25 micrometer technology. On the other hand, for low power applications such as mobile communication equipments, a different 0.22 micrometer (L gate equals 0.22 plus or minus 0.02 micrometer) transistor design which simplifies manufacturing process by eliminating two photolithography steps becomes more attractive. The four transistor designs are compared using CV/I metric and manufacturability trade-offs are discussed.