Analysis of High-Frequency Measurement of Transistors Along With Electromagnetic and SPICE Cosimulation

Sebastien Fregonese (1) , Marco Cabbia (1) , Chandan Yadav (1, 2) , Marina Deng (1) , Soumya Ranjan Panda (1, 3) , Magali De Matos (1) , Didier Celi (4) , Anjan Chakravorty (3) , Thomas Zimmer (1)

1 IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système
2 National Institute of Technology Calicut
3 IIT Madras - Indian Institute of Technology Madras
4 ST-CROLLES - STMicroelectronics [Crolles]

Terahertz (THz) silicon-based electronics is undergoing rapid developments. In order to keep this momentum high, an accurate and optimized on-wafer characterization procedure needs to be developed. While evaluating passive elements, the measured s-parameter data can be verified by a direct use of EM simulation tools. However, this verification requires to precisely introduce part of the measurement environment such as the probes, pads, and access lines to accurately predict the impact of calibration and layout for on-wafer measurements. Unfortunately, this procedure is limited to passive elements. Hence, in this work, we propose a new procedure to emulate the measurement of active devices using an electromagnetic SPICE cosimulation. By this method, one can clearly highlight that a measurement artifact that was observed for the transistor measurement can be reproduced. One of the most representative examples of measurement artifact involves the measurement and estimation of fMAX which is not constant over all frequency bands. Also, the measurement is difficult to perform above 40 GHz. This typical problem is now undoubtedly attributed to the probe-to-substrate coupling and probe-to-probe coupling which are strongly dependent on the probe geometry. Finally, this cosimulation procedure evidently underlines the need for an optimized deembedding procedure above 200 GHz.

Mots clés: Frequency measurement; Probes; Calibration; Solid modeling; Scattering parameters; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; compact model; de-embedding; EM simulation; heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT); high electron mobility transistor (HEMT); high-current model (bipolar transistor circuits) (HICUM); high frequency; maximum oscillation frequency (fMAX); millimeter-wave; MOSFET; on-wafer; probes; s-parameter measurement; terahertz (THz); thru-reflect-line (TRL)

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Sebastien Fregonese, Marco Cabbia, Chandan Yadav, Marina Deng, Soumya Ranjan Panda, et al.. Analysis of High-Frequency Measurement of Transistors Along With Electromagnetic and SPICE Cosimulation. IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 2020, 67 (11), pp.4770-4776. ⟨10.1109/TED.2020.3022603⟩. ⟨hal-03015012⟩