The Enhanced Role of Shallow-Trench Isolation in Ionizing Radiation Damage of 65 nm RF-CMOS on SOI

The mechanism for ionizing radiation damage in multi-finger SOI CMOS devices is presented for the first time. We analyzed the effects of shallow-trench isolation on ionizing radiation response of 65 nm Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) CMOS technology. The radiation response of the CMOS devices was investigated using 63 MeV protons and 10 keV X-rays. The implications of proton irradiation and X-ray irradiation on the dc and RF performance of these devices are presented. The cut-off frequency is degraded due to post-irradiation degradation of device transconductance. Even though there is charge-accumulation in the buried-oxide, there is minimal impact on the front-gate characteristics of the partially-depleted SOI devices in this 65 nm CMOS technology. The implications of parasitic conduction along the STI on device design constraints, particularly for varying device width and number of gate fingers, are discussed in the context of high performance RF CMOS technology. These results suggest that body-contacting schemes which eliminate sidewalls (e.g., H-body, T-body) will provide the necessary total-dose radiation tolerance for multi-finger analog and RF devices, without additional hardening techniques.