Hu_ch06v3.fm Page 195 Friday, February 13, 2009 4:51 PM 6 MOS Transistor
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
This chapter provides a comprehensive introduction to the modern MOSFETs in their on state. (The off state theory is the subject of the next chapter.) It covers the topics of surface mobility, body effect, a simple IV theory, and a more complete theory applicable to both long- and short-channel MOSFETs. It introduces the general concept of CMOS circuit speed and power consumption, voltage gain, high-frequency operation, and topics important to analog circuit designs such as voltage gain and noise. The chapter ends with discussions of DRAM, SRAM, and flash nonvolatile memory cells.
he MOSFET is by far the most prevalent semiconductor device in ICs. It is the basic building block of digital, analog, and memory circuits. Its small size Tallows the making of inexpensive and dense circuits such as giga-bit (Gb) memory chips. Its low power and high speed make possible chips for gigahertz (GHz) computer processors and radio-frequency (RF) cellular phones.
6.1● INTRODUCTION TO THE MOSFET ●
Figure 6–1 shows the basic structure of a MOSFET. The two PN junctions are the source and the drain that supplies the electrons or holes to the transistor and drains them away respectively. The name field-effect transistor or FET refers to the fact that the gate turns the transistor (inversion layer) on and off with an electric field through the oxide. A transistor is a device that presents a high input resistance to the signal source, drawing little input power, and a low resistance to the output circuit, capable of supplying a large current to drive the circuit load. The hatched regions in Fig. 6–1a are the shallow-trench-isolation oxide region. The silicon surfaces under the thick isolation oxide have very high threshold voltages and prevent current flows between the N+ (and P+) diffusion regions along inadvertent surface inversion paths in an IC chip. Figure 6–1 also shows the MOSFET IV characteristics. Depending on the gate voltage, the MOSFET can be off (conducting only a very small off-state leakage current, Ioff) or on (conducting a large on-state current, Ion).
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196 Chapter 6 ● MOS Transistor
Gate Idrain
Source Drain Ion