A Monte-Carlo Method for Distribution of Standby Currents and its Application to DRAM Retention Time

Abstract

We propose an efficient and accurate simulation method to predict the distribution of the standby currents. The leakage currents caused by the trap-assisted and band-to-band tunneling are evaluated from the current Green’s function and cell-to-cell variations of traps and electric field are generated by Monte-Carlo (MC) method. We apply our method to obtain the retention time distribution of DRAM cell transistors and simulation results show the main and tail parts of the data retention time distribution and their temperature and bias dependences clearly.