Off-state luminescence in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and Its use as on-chip voltage probe

The observation of a type of hot-electron luminescence from deep submicron Si MOSFETs in the off state was presented, its properties were characterized and its use as a sensitive on-chip voltage probe was demonstrated. Luminescence was found to be exponentially dependent on voltages applied to the device and behaves similarly to its off-state leakage current. Time-resolved measurements of this luminescence allowed extraction of on-chip voltages in complementary metal-oxide semiconductor integrated circuits. The application of this technique was demonstrated to various signal integrity issues, such as characterization of crosstalk and power supply noise.