A novel approach to the electro-thermal sensitivity analysis of electron devices through efficient physics-based simulations

We present a general approach to concurrently describe small-change variations of a semiconductor device electrical current along with variations of the thermal current through the device thermodes. This representation extends the ordinary small-signal matrix (e.g. SS Y) to a full Electro-Thermal (ET) linearized device characterization. The sensitivity analysis based on Green's Functions is extended to describe the variations of both electrical currents and thermal fluxes originated by any process parameter, hence allowing for a self-consistent Electro-Thermal sensitivity analysis. The new representation, including ET Y matrix and ET Green's Functions, is extracted by efficient physical analysis within TCAD tools, exploiting a PDE-based physical model, such as the drift-diffusion, coupled to the heat diffusion (Fourier) equation. The ET sensitivity allows for the analysis of the device response to any deterministic or random variation of technological parameters and is especially needed for the optimization of electrothermal devices and for the variability analysis of electrical devices characterized by strong self-heating and geometry dependent heat dissipation path.