The temperature dependence of hot carrier degradation (HCD) in FinFET is observed to vary with bias conditions, channel local temperature and degradation time. It is found that the total HCD consist of both contributions from interface traps and oxide traps, whose individual temperature behaviors are different. Therefore, the total HCD composition varies with different conditions causing nonuniversal temperature dependence of HCD. The understandings are helpful for the physical investigation and modeling of HCD in advanced FinFET Technology.

The interface between III-V and metal-oxide-semiconductor materials plays a central role in the operation of high-speed electronic devices, such as transistors and light-emitting diodes. The design of high-performance devices requires a detailed understanding of the electronic structure at the interface. However, the relation between the interface state charges to the electrical failure, such as breakdown of the oxide in the transistor remains unknown. Herein, the defect-driven interfacial electron structure of the Ti/ZrO 2 /Al 2 O 3 /InGaAs system are probed and manipulated using a specifically designed in situ transmission electron microscopy experimental method. The interfacial defects induced by oxygen-atom missing is found the main reason for the device failure. This study unearths the fundamental defect-driven interfacial electric structure of III-V semiconductor materials and paves the way to future high-speed and high-reliability devices.

In this paper, it is reported for the first time that, in nanoscale high-k/metal-gate MOSFETs, the hot carrier degradation (HCD) follows a two-stage law in some stress conditions. Both interface traps and oxide traps contribute to HCD causing its time-dependence varies with different stress modes. The results are helpful for the physical understanding of HCD in nanoscale devices.

Device variability and reliability are becoming increasingly important for nano-CMOS technology and circuits, due to the shrinking circuit design margin with the downscaling supply voltage (Vdd). Therefore, robust design should have the awareness of both variability and reliability. In FinFET technology, strong correlation between the variations of device electrical parameters is found, due to the larger impacts of line-edge roughness (LER) in FinFET structure. Accurate compact models and new design methodology for random variability in FinFETs were proposed for the variation-and correlation-aware design. For the reliability awareness, the impacts of BTI-induced temporal shift and the layout dependent aging effects should be taken into account for the optimization of end-of-life (EOL) performance/power/area (PPA). New-generation aging model and circuit reliability simulator for FinFETs were proposed and developed in industry-standard EDA tools. Future challenges are also pointed out, such as statistical BTI and RTN. The results are helpful for the robust and resilient design for 16/14nm and beyond.

In this paper, an industry-level new-generation EDA solution for reliability-aware design in nanoscale FinFET technology is presented for the first time, with new compact transistor aging models and upgraded circuit reliability simulator. Our work solves various issues found in FinFET silicon data of NBTI aging. Especially, instead of ignoring or less accurate NBTI recovery effect model in traditional simulators, accurate NBTI degradation and recovery models are proposed and validated by silicon data for full stress/recovery range in the FinFET technology. The history effect, one of the important features of NBTI which is missing in the existing industrial tools, is included based on new simulation methodology. Since FinFET reliability data suggests the conventional linear extrapolation method is no longer valid, an accurate fast-speed long-term prediction method is proposed based on smart iteration flows of equivalence. The frequency dependence of NBTI, which draws much attention, is included in the new simulator automatically. This work has been integrated into Cadence reliability simulator, providing designers an opportunity for accurate reliability-aware circuit design.

Amplitude distribution of random telegraph noise (RTN) in nanoscale CMOS technology is an open question, with both lognormal and exponential distributions widely reported in literatures. In this paper, we experimentally clarified the underlying reasons for the first time, and revealed that the trap coupling effect is the missing role behind the divergent measured results of RTN amplitude statistics. Based on the proposed new method, “clean” RTN data with and without coupling are successfully characterized. It is found that, with increasing of the coupling strength, the apparent distribution changes from exponential-like to lognormal-like; while the exact form is actually the two-stage lognormal distribution, originating from two categories of traps (located above the channel percolation paths or not). The results are essential for understanding of oxide trap coupling and modeling of RTN and are thus helpful for resilient circuit design against RTN in the future.

We report to synthesize the novel three-dimensional anode based on the core-shell Sn-Ni-Cu-alloy@carbon nanorods which was fabricated by pulse nano-electrodeposition. Li-ion batteries equipped with the three-dimensional anode demonstrated almost 100% capacity retention over 400 cycles at 450 mA g-1 and excellent rate performance even up to 9000 mA g-1 for advanced Li-ion battery. Insight of the high performance can be attributed to three key factors, such as Li-Sn alloys for Li-ion storage, Ni-Cu matrix for the electronic conductive and nanorods structure, the carbon shell for the electronic/Li-ion conductive and holding stable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) because these shells always kept stable volumes after extension of initial charge-discharge cycles.

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations are performed to investigate the hydrogen-related oxygen vacancy defects in HfO2 gate dielectrics. The results demonstrate that the introduction of the hydrogen atom has less effect on micro-structure of the HfO2 oxygen vacancy defects. And the new hydrogen-related defects have good thermal stability. The stability of different hydrogen-related structures, formation energy of new defects and their energy density of traps are studied. Furthermore, the energy-position relationship curves between neighboring charge states of defects are also demonstrated, for analyzing the charging/discharging transition energy barriers.

In this paper, a new class of layout dependent effects (LDE)-the time-dependent layout dependency due to device aging, is reported for the first time. The BTI and HCI degradation in nanoscale HKMG devices are experimentally found to be sensitive to layout configurations, even biased at the same stress condition. This new effect of layout dependent aging (LDA) can significantly mess the circuit design, which conventionally only includes the static LDE modeled for time-zero performance. Further studies at circuit level indicate that, for resilient device-circuit-layout co-design, especially to ensure enough design margin near the end of life, LDA cannot be neglected. The results are helpful to guide the cross-layer technology/design co-optimization.

We synthesized a core–shell structure with graphene as the shell and nano-hollow γ-Fe2O3 as the core through a Kirkendall process at room temperature.

A new framework for first-principle simulation on random charging/discharging of individual oxide traps is established and adopted for detailed studies on HfO 2 high-k gate dielectrics for the first time. The proposed framework provides an effective solution to the challenges in conventional multi-phonon simulation methodology, and successfully explains various experimental results in HfO 2 devices. 1-DOV defect, instead of traditionally assumed SOV, is found to be the crime oxide trap in HfO 2 . And the anomalous RTN observations strongly support the high-order four-state model, which can be well explained by the two metastable states found in the 2-DOV defect. The framework is helpful for the fundamental understanding of RTN and NBTI reliability.

In this paper, using DTMOS as an effective solution of RTN suppression without device/circuit performance penalty is proposed and demonstrated for the first time, with experimental verification and circuit analysis. The experiments show that RTN amplitude is greatly reduced in DTMOS mode, which is even better than the body-biasing technique of FBB, due to the efficient dynamic modulation mechanism. Circuit stability and performance degradation induced by RTN are much improved in the design using DTMOS. New characteristics of RTN physics in DTMOS are also observed and studied in detail. The results are helpful to the robust and reliable device/circuit co-design in future nano-CMOS technology.

In this paper, a new methodology for the assessment of end-of-life variability of NBTI is proposed for the first time. By introducing the concept of characteristic failure probability, the uncertainty in the predicted 10-year VDD is addressed. Based on this, variability resulted from NBTI degradation at end of life under specific VDD is extensively studied with a novel characterization technique. With the further circuit level analysis based on this new methodology, the timing margin can be relaxed. The new methodology has also been extended to FinFET in this work. The wide applicability of this methodology is helpful to future reliability/variability-aware circuit design in nano-CMOS technology.

Background Non-B cell immunoglobulins (Igs) are widely expressed in epithelial cancer cells. The past 20 years of research have demonstrated that non-B cell Igs are associated with cancer cell proliferation, the cellular cytoskeleton and cancer stem cells. In this study we explored the transcriptional mechanism of IgM production in non-B cells. Methods The promoter region of a V-segment of the heavy mu chain gene (VH6-1) was cloned from a colon cancer cell line HT-29. Next, the promoter activities in non-B cells and B-cells were detected using the dual-luciferase reporter assay. Then the transcription factor binding to the promoter regions was evaluated by electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs) and gel supershift experiments. Results Our data showed that the sequence 1200 bp upstream of VH6-1 exhibited promoter activity in both B and non-B cells. No new regulatory elements were identified within the region 1200 bp to 300 bp upstream of VH6-1. In addition, Oct-1 was found to bind to the octamer element of the Ig gene promoter in cancer cells, in contrast to B cells, which utilize the transcriptional factor Oct-2. Conclusion The regulatory mechanisms among different cell types controlling the production of IgM heavy chains are worth discussing.

The restriction of immunoglobulin (Ig) expression to B lymphocytes is well established. However, several reports have confirmed that the Ig gene can be expressed in many non-B cancer cells and/or some normal cells. Our aim is to determine whether the Ig gene promoter can be activated in non-B cancer cells and to identify the regulatory mechanism for Ig gene expression. Our results show that the Ig promoter of VH4-59 was activated in several non-B cancer cell lines. Moreover, two novel positive regulatory elements, an enhancer-like element at −800 to −610 bp and a copromoter-like element at −610 to −300 bp, were identified in two epithelial cancer cell lines, HeLa S3 and HT-29. The octamer element (5′-ATGCAAAT-3′) located in the Ig promoter, a crucial element for B-cell-derived Ig gene transcription, was also very important for non-B-cell-derived Ig gene transcription. More importantly, we confirmed that octamer-related protein-1 (Oct-1), but not Oct-2, was a crucial transcriptional factor for Ig gene transcription due to its ability to bind to the octamer element of the Ig promoter in epithelial cancer cells. These results suggested the presence of a distinct regulatory mechanism for Ig gene expression in non-B cancer cells.

Immunoglobulins (Igs) are found thus far only to be produced by differentiated B lymphocytes. By immunohistochemistry analysis, in situ hybridization, and laser capture microdissection-assisted single-cell PCR, we demonstrate that human cancers of epithelial origin, including carcinomas of breast, colon, liver, lung, established epithelial cancer lines, as well as some normal lung tissues, also produce IgG in both cytoplasmic and secreted forms. Furthermore, blockade of tumor-derived IgG by either antisense DNA or antihuman IgG antibody increased programmed cell death and inhibited growth of cancer cells in vitro. More importantly, administration of antihuman IgG antibody also suppressed the growth of an IgG-secreting carcinoma line in immunodeficient nude mice. Our results support a role of tumor-derived IgG as growth factor for epithelial cancers. Prevalent expression of IgG in human carcinomas and its growth-promoting functions may have important implications in growth regulation and targeted therapy of human cancers.