Analysis and enhancement of reliability of nano scale CMOS circuits

As technology is scaling down to nano-scale, reliability of the digital integrated circuits is reducing greatly which has become an obstacle for further technology scaling. In this project, we investigate the effect of transistor breakdown on digital circuits. We develop a methodology to identify the most critical transistors to be safeguarded against breakdown in a given circuit. Safeguarding a transistor against breakdown comes with an overhead. The safeguarding method proposed to use is replacement of a normal thin oxide transistor with a thick oxide transistor which results in delay increase. Hence, it is important to identify the most critical transistors to be safeguarded. We will test our methodology on benchmark\ud circuits