The performance degradation of CMOS differential amplifiers due to hot carrier effects

Hot carrier 현상에 의한 CMOS 차동 증폭기의 성능 저하

The performance degradation of CMOS differential amplifiers due to hot carrier effect has been measured and analyzed. Two-state CMOS amplifiers whose input transistors are PMOSFETs were designed and fabriacted using the ISRC CMOS 1.5.mu.m process. It was observed after the amplifier was hot-carrier stressed that the small-signal voltage gain and the input offset voltage increased and the phase margin decreased. The performance variation results from the increase of the transconductances and gate capacitances of the PMOSFETs used as input transistors in the differential input stage and the output stage and also resulted from the decrease of their output conductances. After long-term stress, the amplifier became unstable. The reason might be that its phase margin was reduced due to hot carrier effect.