Bulk-layout-compatible 0.18-μm SOI-CMOS technology using body-tied partial-trench-isolation (PTI)

Partial-trench-isolated (PTI) 0.18-μm SOI-CMOS technology has been established to realize the body-tied structure and eliminate floating-body effects. The body potential of PTI SOI MOSFETs is fixed through the silicon layer under the PTI oxide. It was revealed that the body-tied PTI structure provides immunity from kink effects and improves drive current as compared with floating transistors. The SOI inherent merits were investigated by delay-time measurement. Low junction capacitance, coupling effects and low back-gate-bias effects of PTI CMOS offer excellent speed performance. Stable function and body-coupling benefits are obtained with proper body engineering. The full-bit functions of a 4-Mbit SRAM was obtained with a reasonable yield. The yield of the SOI SRAM is almost the same as that of the bulk SRAM. An abnormal leakage current was not observed up to a supply voltage of 2.6 V corresponding to the stress voltage of the burn-in process. It was demonstrated that PTI technology possesses layout and process compatibility with bulk. It is concluded that the PTI technology can expand SOI applications in system-level large-scale integrations (LSIs) by cutting off the floating-SOI constraint.