2.

4 Nonideal I-V Effects 85

ever, it is normally insignificant at |Vgd| f VDD [Mukhopadhyay05], only coming into play
when the gate is driven outside the rails in an attempt to cut off subthreshold leakage.

2.4.5 Temperature Dependence

Transistor characteristics are influenced by temperature [Cobbold66, Vadasz66,
Tsividis99, Gutierrez01]. Carrier mobility decreases with temperature. An approximate
relation is
 kR
©T ¹
R (T ) = R (Tr ) ª º (2.51)
« Tr »
where T is the absolute temperature, Tr is room temperature, and kR is a fitting parameter
with a typical value of about 1.5. vsat also decreases with temperature, dropping by about
20% from 300 to 400 K.
The magnitude of the threshold voltage decreases nearly linearly with temperature
and may be approximated by

Vt (T ) = Vt (Tr )  kvt (T  Tr ) (2.52)

where kvt is typically about 1–2 mV/K.

Ion at high VDD decreases with temperature. Subthreshold leakage increases exponen-
tially with temperature. BTBT increases slowly with temperature, and gate leakage is
almost independent of temperature.
The combined temperature effects are shown in Figure 2.23. At high Vgs, the current
has a negative temperature coefficient; i.e., it decreases with temperature. At low Vgs, the cur-
rent has a positive temperature coefficient. Thus, OFF current increases with temperature.
ON current Idsat normally decreases with temperature, as shown in Figure 2.24, so circuit
performance is worst at high temperature. However, for systems operating at low VDD
(typically < 0.7 – 1.1 V), Idsat increases with temperature [Kumar06].

Ion (μA)
800

780

Ids 760
Increasing
Temperature 740

720

0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Vgs Temperature (C)
FIGURE 2.23 I–V characteristics of nMOS transistor in FIGURE 2.24 Idsat vs. temperature
saturation at various temperatures