Este trabalho aborda o problema de dimensionamento portas lógicas e assinalamento de Vt para otimização de potência, área e temporização em circuitos integrados modernos. O fluxo proposto é aplicado aos conjuntos de circuitos de teste dos Concursos do International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) de 2012 e 2013. Este fluxo também é adapatado e avaliado nos estágios pós posicionamento e roteamento global em projetos industriais de circuitos integrados, que utilizam uma ferramenta precisa de análise estática de temporização. As técnicas propostas geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de teste do Concurso do ISPD 2013 (no qual foi a ferramenta vencedora), com em média 8% menos consumo de potência estática quando comparada com os outros concorrentes. Além disso, após algumas modificações nos algoritmos, nós reduzimos o consumo em mais 10% em média a pontência estáticas com relação aos resultados do concurso. O foco deste trabalho é desenvolver e aplicar um algoritmo estado-da-arte de seleção portas lógicas para melhorar ainda mais projetos industriais de alto desempenho já otimizados após as fases de posicionamento e roteamento do fluxo de projeto físico industrial. Vamos apresentar e discutir vários problemas encontrados quando da aplicação de técnicas de otimização global em projetos industriais reais que não são totalmente cobertos em publicações encontradas na literatura. Os métodos propostos geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de referência no Concurso do ISPD 2013, no qual foi a solução vencedora. Considerando a aplicação industrial, as técnicas propostas reduzem a potência estática em até 18,2 %, com redução média de 10,4 %, sem qualquer degradação na qualidade de temporização do circuito. / This work addresses the gate sizing and Vt assignment problem for power, area and timing optimization in modern integrated circuits (IC). The proposed flow is applied to the Benchmark Suites of the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) 2012 and 2013 Contests. It is also adapted and evaluated in the post placement and post global routing stage of an industrial IC design flow using a sign-off static timing analysis engine. The proposed techniques are able to generate the best solutions for all benchmarks in the ISPD 2013 Contest (in which we were the winning team), with on average 8% lower leakage with respect to all other contestants. Also, after some refinements in the algorithms, we reduce leakage by another 10% on average over the contest results. The focus of this work is to develop and apply a state-of-the-art cell selection algorithm to further improve already optimized high-performance industrial designs after the placement and routing stages of the industrial physical design flow. We present the basic concepts involved in the gate sizing problem and how earlier literature addresses it. Several problems found when applying global optimization techniques in real-life industrial designs, which are not fully covered in publications found in literature, are presented and discussed. Considering the industrial application, the proposed techniques reduce leakage power by up to 18.2%, with average reduction of 10.4% without any degradation in timing quality.

Neste trabalho, foi realizado um estudo da caracterização elétrica dos ISFETs com estrutura Si/SiO2/Si3N4, utilizando pseudoeletrodos de Pt, Ag e Au como alternativas aos eletrodos convencionais para medições de pH. Primeiramente, foram empregados três métodos reportados na literatura (extrapolação linear para obtenção da tensão de limiar, segunda derivada para obtenção da tensão de limiar e corrente de sublimiar, respectivamente) com o objetivo de obter a sensibilidade dos ISFETs (mV/pH) e analisar a confiabilidade dos resultados utilizando eletrodo de referência padrão de Ag/AgCl. Posteriormente, tendo como base o eletrodo de Ag/AgCl, foram estudados os desempenhos de pseudoeletrodos de Pt, Ag e Au nas medidas de pH. Como resultado, observou-se que os pseudoeletrodos de Pt e Ag apresentaram sensibilidades compatíveis com o eletrodo de referência padrão de Ag/AgCl (~50mV/pH) para pH ácido na faixa de 1 a 3. Já o pseudoeletrodo de Au, manteve um comportamento aproximadamente linear ao longo de toda a faixa de pH estudada (1 a 10), porém, com sensibilidade inferior na faixa de 32 à 34mV/pH. / In this work, it is presented a study of the electrical characterization of Si/SiO2/Si3N4 estructured ISFETs using Pt, Ag and Au pseudoelectrodes as alternative references to the conventional ones for pH measurements. At first, it was used three different methods (linear extrapolation method to obtain the threshold voltage, second derivative method to obtain the threshold voltage and subthreshold-current method, respectively) having as objective to obtain the sensitivity of the ISFETs (mV/pH) and to analyze the reliability of the results using the standard Ag/AgCl reference electrode. Subsequently, using the Ag/AgCl electrode as a base for comparation, it was studied the performance of Pt, Ag and Au pseudoelectrodes for pH measurement. As a result, it was observed that the Pt and Ag electrodes presented sensitivity similar to the standard Ag/AgCl reference electrode (~50mV/pH) for pH in the range of 1 to 3. On the other hand, the Au pseudoelectrode presented an approximately linear behavior in all studied range of the pH (1 to 10), but, with lower sensitivity varying in the range of 32 to 34mV/pH.

Les dernières technologies microélectroniques embarquent des transistors dont les isolants de grille sont des isolants à forte constante diélectrique (high-k en anglais) associés à des grilles métalliques (on utilise l'abréviation HKMG pour high-k – metal gate). Si cet empilement permet de garder une quantité de charges suffisante dans le canal, il est plus difficile de contrôler les tensions de seuil des transistors à cause de la présence de charges et de dipôle dans ces couches ou aux interfaces. Deux études préliminaires ont établi qu'il existe une corrélation entre les énergies de liaisons des éléments mesurées par XPS d'un empilement HKMG et la tension de seuil d'un transistor utilisant ce même empilement. Des charges sont présentes dans les couches isolantes des empilements HKMG, conduisant à un décalage du potentiel électrostatique au sein de ces couches. Ceci induit une modification du travail de sortie effectif de l'électrode métallique du transistor. Et en XPS ces charges induisent une variation de l'énergie cinétique des électrons extraits des couches se trouvant sous ces charges. L'objectif de cette thèse est de simuler de manière quantitative l'impact électrostatique induit par ces charges et dipôles et de comparer cet impact aux décalages des raies XPS ainsi qu'aux mesures électriques des tensions de seuil des transistors. Ceci permettra ensuite d'estimer la variation des tensions seuil des transistors très en amont dans le procédé de fabrication / The last microelectronic technologies includes transistors with materials of high dielectric constant (high-k ) associated to metal gate (we use the abbreviation HKMG for high-k - bad metal). If this pile allows to keep a sufficient quantity of charges in the channel, it is more difficult to check the threshold voltage of transistors because of the presence of charge and of dipole in these layers or in the interfaces. Two preliminary studies established that there is a correlation between the binding energies measured by XPS of a pile HKMG and the threshold voltage of a transistor using the same pile. Charges are present in the insulating layers of piles HKMG, leading to a difference of the electrostatic potential within these layers. A modification of the effective workfunction of the metallic electrode of the transistor in s then observed, and in XPS these charges lead t oa variation of the kinetic energy of electrons extracted from the layer. The purpose of this thesis is simulate in a quantitative way the electrostatic impact of this charges and dipôles and to compare this impact with the observation made by XPS as well as with the electric measures of the threshold voltage of transistors. This will then allow to estimate the variation of the threshold voltage of transistors well further in the manufacturing process.

This thesis includes two topics. One is a low-power high-speed 8-bit pipelining CLA design using dual threshold voltage (dual- Vth) domino logic. The other is a low-cost digital I/Q separator for DVB-T receivers. A high speed and low power 8-bit CLA using dual- Vth domino logic blocks arranged in a PLA-like style with pipelining is presented. According to parallely precharge and sequentially evaluate in a cascaded set of domino logic blocks, transistors in the precharge part and the evaluation part of dual- Vth domino logic are, respectively, replaced by high Vth transistors to reduce subthreshold leakage current through OFF transistors, and low Vth transistors. Moreover, an nMOS transistor is inserted in the precharge phase of the output inverter such that the two-phase dual- Vth domino logic can be properly applied in a pipeline structure. Consequently, the proposed design keeps the advantage of high speed while attaining the effect of low power dissipation. A low-cost digital I/Q separator is presented in the second part of this thesis. Using digital I/Q separator in place of the traditional analog I/Q separator guarantees the design conquer gain and phase mismatch problems between the I and Q channels. The proposed design can berealized by inverters and shifters such that the goal of low cost can be achieved.

abstract: Process variations have become increasingly important for scaled technologies starting at 45nm. The increased variations are primarily due to random dopant fluctuations, line-edge roughness and oxide thickness fluctuation. These variations greatly impact all aspects of circuit performance and pose a grand challenge to future robust IC design. To improve robustness, efficient methodology is required that considers effect of variations in the design flow. Analyzing timing variability of complex circuits with HSPICE simulations is very time consuming. This thesis proposes an analytical model to predict variability in CMOS circuits that is quick and accurate. There are several analytical models to estimate nominal delay performance but very little work has been done to accurately model delay variability. The proposed model is comprehensive and estimates nominal delay and variability as a function of transistor width, load capacitance and transition time. First, models are developed for library gates and the accuracy of the models is verified with HSPICE simulations for 45nm and 32nm technology nodes. The difference between predicted and simulated σ/μ for the library gates is less than 1%. Next, the accuracy of the model for nominal delay is verified for larger circuits including ISCAS'85 benchmark circuits. The model predicted results are within 4% error of HSPICE simulated results and take a small fraction of the time, for 45nm technology. Delay variability is analyzed for various paths and it is observed that non-critical paths can become critical because of Vth variation. Variability on shortest paths show that rate of hold violations increase enormously with increasing Vth variation. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Electrical Engineering 2011

Este trabalho aborda o problema de dimensionamento portas lógicas e assinalamento de Vt para otimização de potência, área e temporização em circuitos integrados modernos. O fluxo proposto é aplicado aos conjuntos de circuitos de teste dos Concursos do International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) de 2012 e 2013. Este fluxo também é adapatado e avaliado nos estágios pós posicionamento e roteamento global em projetos industriais de circuitos integrados, que utilizam uma ferramenta precisa de análise estática de temporização. As técnicas propostas geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de teste do Concurso do ISPD 2013 (no qual foi a ferramenta vencedora), com em média 8% menos consumo de potência estática quando comparada com os outros concorrentes. Além disso, após algumas modificações nos algoritmos, nós reduzimos o consumo em mais 10% em média a pontência estáticas com relação aos resultados do concurso. O foco deste trabalho é desenvolver e aplicar um algoritmo estado-da-arte de seleção portas lógicas para melhorar ainda mais projetos industriais de alto desempenho já otimizados após as fases de posicionamento e roteamento do fluxo de projeto físico industrial. Vamos apresentar e discutir vários problemas encontrados quando da aplicação de técnicas de otimização global em projetos industriais reais que não são totalmente cobertos em publicações encontradas na literatura. Os métodos propostos geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de referência no Concurso do ISPD 2013, no qual foi a solução vencedora. Considerando a aplicação industrial, as técnicas propostas reduzem a potência estática em até 18,2 %, com redução média de 10,4 %, sem qualquer degradação na qualidade de temporização do circuito. / This work addresses the gate sizing and Vt assignment problem for power, area and timing optimization in modern integrated circuits (IC). The proposed flow is applied to the Benchmark Suites of the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) 2012 and 2013 Contests. It is also adapted and evaluated in the post placement and post global routing stage of an industrial IC design flow using a sign-off static timing analysis engine. The proposed techniques are able to generate the best solutions for all benchmarks in the ISPD 2013 Contest (in which we were the winning team), with on average 8% lower leakage with respect to all other contestants. Also, after some refinements in the algorithms, we reduce leakage by another 10% on average over the contest results. The focus of this work is to develop and apply a state-of-the-art cell selection algorithm to further improve already optimized high-performance industrial designs after the placement and routing stages of the industrial physical design flow. We present the basic concepts involved in the gate sizing problem and how earlier literature addresses it. Several problems found when applying global optimization techniques in real-life industrial designs, which are not fully covered in publications found in literature, are presented and discussed. Considering the industrial application, the proposed techniques reduce leakage power by up to 18.2%, with average reduction of 10.4% without any degradation in timing quality.

Este trabalho aborda o problema de dimensionamento portas lógicas e assinalamento de Vt para otimização de potência, área e temporização em circuitos integrados modernos. O fluxo proposto é aplicado aos conjuntos de circuitos de teste dos Concursos do International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) de 2012 e 2013. Este fluxo também é adapatado e avaliado nos estágios pós posicionamento e roteamento global em projetos industriais de circuitos integrados, que utilizam uma ferramenta precisa de análise estática de temporização. As técnicas propostas geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de teste do Concurso do ISPD 2013 (no qual foi a ferramenta vencedora), com em média 8% menos consumo de potência estática quando comparada com os outros concorrentes. Além disso, após algumas modificações nos algoritmos, nós reduzimos o consumo em mais 10% em média a pontência estáticas com relação aos resultados do concurso. O foco deste trabalho é desenvolver e aplicar um algoritmo estado-da-arte de seleção portas lógicas para melhorar ainda mais projetos industriais de alto desempenho já otimizados após as fases de posicionamento e roteamento do fluxo de projeto físico industrial. Vamos apresentar e discutir vários problemas encontrados quando da aplicação de técnicas de otimização global em projetos industriais reais que não são totalmente cobertos em publicações encontradas na literatura. Os métodos propostos geram as melhores soluções para todos os circuitos de referência no Concurso do ISPD 2013, no qual foi a solução vencedora. Considerando a aplicação industrial, as técnicas propostas reduzem a potência estática em até 18,2 %, com redução média de 10,4 %, sem qualquer degradação na qualidade de temporização do circuito. / This work addresses the gate sizing and Vt assignment problem for power, area and timing optimization in modern integrated circuits (IC). The proposed flow is applied to the Benchmark Suites of the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) 2012 and 2013 Contests. It is also adapted and evaluated in the post placement and post global routing stage of an industrial IC design flow using a sign-off static timing analysis engine. The proposed techniques are able to generate the best solutions for all benchmarks in the ISPD 2013 Contest (in which we were the winning team), with on average 8% lower leakage with respect to all other contestants. Also, after some refinements in the algorithms, we reduce leakage by another 10% on average over the contest results. The focus of this work is to develop and apply a state-of-the-art cell selection algorithm to further improve already optimized high-performance industrial designs after the placement and routing stages of the industrial physical design flow. We present the basic concepts involved in the gate sizing problem and how earlier literature addresses it. Several problems found when applying global optimization techniques in real-life industrial designs, which are not fully covered in publications found in literature, are presented and discussed. Considering the industrial application, the proposed techniques reduce leakage power by up to 18.2%, with average reduction of 10.4% without any degradation in timing quality.

Neste trabalho, foi realizado um estudo da caracterização elétrica dos ISFETs com estrutura Si/SiO2/Si3N4, utilizando pseudoeletrodos de Pt, Ag e Au como alternativas aos eletrodos convencionais para medições de pH. Primeiramente, foram empregados três métodos reportados na literatura (extrapolação linear para obtenção da tensão de limiar, segunda derivada para obtenção da tensão de limiar e corrente de sublimiar, respectivamente) com o objetivo de obter a sensibilidade dos ISFETs (mV/pH) e analisar a confiabilidade dos resultados utilizando eletrodo de referência padrão de Ag/AgCl. Posteriormente, tendo como base o eletrodo de Ag/AgCl, foram estudados os desempenhos de pseudoeletrodos de Pt, Ag e Au nas medidas de pH. Como resultado, observou-se que os pseudoeletrodos de Pt e Ag apresentaram sensibilidades compatíveis com o eletrodo de referência padrão de Ag/AgCl (~50mV/pH) para pH ácido na faixa de 1 a 3. Já o pseudoeletrodo de Au, manteve um comportamento aproximadamente linear ao longo de toda a faixa de pH estudada (1 a 10), porém, com sensibilidade inferior na faixa de 32 à 34mV/pH. / In this work, it is presented a study of the electrical characterization of Si/SiO2/Si3N4 estructured ISFETs using Pt, Ag and Au pseudoelectrodes as alternative references to the conventional ones for pH measurements. At first, it was used three different methods (linear extrapolation method to obtain the threshold voltage, second derivative method to obtain the threshold voltage and subthreshold-current method, respectively) having as objective to obtain the sensitivity of the ISFETs (mV/pH) and to analyze the reliability of the results using the standard Ag/AgCl reference electrode. Subsequently, using the Ag/AgCl electrode as a base for comparation, it was studied the performance of Pt, Ag and Au pseudoelectrodes for pH measurement. As a result, it was observed that the Pt and Ag electrodes presented sensitivity similar to the standard Ag/AgCl reference electrode (~50mV/pH) for pH in the range of 1 to 3. On the other hand, the Au pseudoelectrode presented an approximately linear behavior in all studied range of the pH (1 to 10), but, with lower sensitivity varying in the range of 32 to 34mV/pH.

Progress in advanced microlithography and deposition techniques have made feasible high- k dielectric materials for MOS transistors. The continued scaling of CMOS devices is pushing the Si-SiO2 to its limit to consider high-k gate dielectrics. The demand for faster, low power, smaller, less expensive devices with good functionality and higher performance increases the demand for high-k dielectric based MOS devices. This thesis gives an in-depth study of threshold voltages of PMOS and NMOS transistors using various high-k dielectric materials like Tantalum pent oxide (Ta2O5), Hafnium oxide (HfO2), Zirconium oxide (ZrO2) and Aluminum oxide (Al2O3) gate oxides. Higher dielectric constant may lead to high oxide capacitance (Cox), which affects the threshold voltage (VT) of the device. The working potential of MOS devices can be increased by high dielectric gate oxide and work function of gate metal which may also influence the threshold voltage (VT). High dielectric materials have low gate leakage current, high breakdown voltage and are thermally stable on Silicon Substrate (Si). Different kinds of deposition techniques for different gate oxides, gate metals and stability over silicon substrates are analyzed theoretically. The impact of the properties of gate oxides such as oxide thickness, interface trap charges, doping concentration on threshold voltage were simulated, plotted and studied. This study involved comparisons of oxides-oxides, metals-metals, and metals-oxides. Gate metals and alloys with work function of less than 5eV would be suitable candidates for aluminum oxide, hafnium oxide etc. based MOSFETs.

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