Fabrication and characterization of microelectronic devices, circuits and systems (design of low-power high-performance comparators and SRAMs)

• Main Authors: Yeo, Kiat Seng., Kong, Natalie Zhi Hui.
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Research Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Microelectronics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/14232
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Nowadays, state-of-the-art electronic devices are calling for high-speed and low-power subsystems to be adopted as their critical building blocks to ensure an enhanced overall system performance. This is motivated by the perpetual market demand for increasingly sophisticated communication and multimedia applications, such as handheld terminals and mobile phones. In the meantime, CMOS technology scaling, which is primarily driven by Moore’s Law, faces tremendous roadblocks as it continues into the nano-regime. Undesired effects such as increased parasitic capacitances, energy consumption and the associated heat dissipation of CMOS devices all emerge as major obstacles in sustaining Moore’s Law. As a result, it is essential to continue venturing into higher-end approaches and realizing more refined solutions to achieve further low-voltage/low-power design while sustaining highspeed performance and small-area consumption. In this project, we present several competitive CMOS VLSI subsystem designs, in particular CMOS comparators and Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM), for use in low-voltage low-power environments.