Analog Circuit Performance Issues with Aggressively Scaled Gate Oxide CMOS Technologies

Abstract

MOS transistors with sub 100 nm channel lengths need a gate oxide thickness in the range of 1-2 nm to combat the short channel effects. However at these gate dielectric thicknesses, the gate current is no longer negligible. In this paper, we report the device analog behavior with extremely scaled oxides for integrating mixed signal circuits using the scaled digital CMOS technologies. We show the performance of common source amplifiers and current mirror circuits with these technologies. Our results also show that though thin oxides result in good voltage gains of amplifier circuits, the increased gate leakage degrades the performance of current mirror circuits. We also analyze the performance of different classes of current mirror circuits in the presence of gate leakage and provide broad guidelines for analog circuit design in the presence of gate leakage.