학술논문

Temperature-Dependent Study of Large-Signal Reliability of p-FET-Based Power Amplifier for mmWave Applications
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability IEEE Trans. Device Mater. Relib. Device and Materials Reliability, IEEE Transactions on. 23(3):412-418 Sep, 2023
Subject
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Stress
Radio frequency
Temperature measurement
Reliability
Logic gates
Degradation
Temperature
Continuous wave (CW)
hot carriers
large-signal reliability
mmWave
power amplifier (PA)
Language
ISSN
1530-4388
1558-2574
Abstract
For the first time, the temperature dependence of RF reliability of a power amplifier (PA) is investigated for the mmWave frequency band. The PA comprises a common source configured single pFET fabricated in 45RFSOI technology by GlobalFoundries. Temperature dependence of DC and large-signal figures of merit (FOMs) are analysed as a function of RF power levels and DC stress at the gate terminal for a continuous wave (CW) frequency of 26.5GHz. In this study, we have also investigated the relationship between temperature and the time slope exponent obtained from the % degradation in ON current $(I_{ON})$ for different operating regions of PA. The degradation mechanism involves trapping hot holes in pre-existing traps and the generation of new traps in the oxide due to hot holes. A non-linear relationship between DC and RF FOMs $(I_{ON}$ and $P_{OUT})$ is investigated for the increasing temperature. The non-linear relationship extracted from the slope between ${\Delta }I_{ON}$ and ${\Delta }P_{OUT}$ shows that the DC performance is impacted more than the RF performance with the increasing temperature. Degradation in output power of PA cell increases with the temperature. As a result, the lifetime of PA cell decreases with increasing temperature and fails to achieve a 10-year lifetime.