Wire-Metal-Based Temperature Sensor Adaptive to Technology Scaling
摘要
Fully integrated temperature sensors have evolved into essential components within modern system-on-chips (SoCs), offering crucial thermal monitoring capability and overload protection of the core circuit modules. These sensors ought to provide high-precision measurements (<2 °C error) over a wide temperature range [1–3]. Furthermore, as technology continues to scale down, there is a growing demand for area and energy-efficient temperature-sensing solutions in advanced process (e.g., <28 nm) that align with area/power-constrained design requirements [4–7]. Nevertheless, the challenges brought by technology scaling, such as reduced VDD headroom for design, increased leakage, and short channel effects, pose obstacles that compromise sensing accuracy and the Resolution Figure-of-Merit (R-FoM). Developing a compact, high-performance temperature sensor is of paramount importance to ensure the optimum performance of the IC [4, 5, 8, 9].