1 On leave from Polytechnical University of Catalunya, Spain. Abstract A reduced intrinsic threshold voltage (VT) in addition to its variability has a direct impact on circuit design. Worstcase design styles assume that all transistors use the same worst-case VT whose average and standard deviation come from inter-die statistical variations. However, intra-die differences, such as random local ...

The management of power consumption for battery life is widely considered to be the limiting factor in supporting the concurrent operation of high performance, complex applications on mobile platforms. At 65nm and below, minimizing the static power dissipation through aggressive techniques such as coarse grain MTCMOS power gating and threshold voltage scaling can yield these significant reducti...

A variable threshold voltage keeper circuit technique is proposed for simultaneous power reduction and speed enhancement of domino logic circuits. The threshold voltage of a keeper transistor is dynamically modified during circuit operation to reduce contention current without sacrificing noise immunity. The variable threshold voltage keeper circuit technique enhances circuit evaluation speed b...

The two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the interface between insulating LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 is intriguing both as a fundamental science topic and for possible applications in electronics or sensors. For example, because the electrical conductance of the 2DEG at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface can be tuned by applying an electric field, new electronic devices utilizing the 2DEG at the LaAlO3/SrTiO...

Certain biphasic waveforms require less energy to defibrillate than do monophasic pulses of equal duration, although the mechanisms of this increased effectiveness remain unclear. This study used strength-duration and percent success curves for defibrillation with monophasic and biphasic truncated exponential waveforms to explore these mechanisms. In part 1, defibrillation thresholds were deter...

The gate conductor material affects the threshold voltage of metal-oxidesemiconductor (MOS) transistors through the influence of the electrochemical work function and electric charge. Measurements of the threshold voltage from current voltage characteristics may therefore provide a method to estimate the electronic properties of biomolecules located on the gate electrode. We have deposited DNA ...

Extremely low voltage operation near or below threshold voltage is a key circuit technology to improve the energy efficiency of information systems and to realize ultra-low power sensor nodes. However, it is difficult to operate conventional analog circuits based on amplifier at low voltage. Furthermore, PVT (Process, Voltage and Temperature) variation and random Vth variation degrade the minim...

This article presents an up-to-date review of the several extraction methods commonly used to determine the value of the threshold voltage of MOSFETs. It includes the different methods that extract this quantity from the drain current versus gate voltage transfer characteristics measured under linear operation conditions for crystalline and non-crystalline MOSFETs. The various methods presented...

Intrinsic threshold voltage fluctuations introduced by local oxide thickness variations (OTVs) in deep submicrometer (decanano) MOSFETs are studied using three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulations on a statistical scale. Quantum mechanical effects are included in the simulations employing the density gradient (DG) formalism. The random Si/SiO2 and gate/SiO2 interfaces are generated from a po...

The supply and threshold voltage scaling has been proposed for low-voltage/low-power design [1, 2, 3]. The programmable floating-gate circuits [3, 4] can be used to implement low-voltage/low-power digital circuits. The threshold voltages are shifted using reversed supply voltages and UV-light. The supply voltage may be reduced and the current level is determined by the threshold shift. Before t...