N. Speciale

A new DC model for five-terminals bipolar devices used in smart-power ICs

A new DC model for five-terminals bipolar devices used in advanced smart-power applications is presented. The model accounts for all parasitic effects associated with four-junction structures, enables an easy procedure for parameters extraction and favourably compares with experimental data on both simple devices and complex ICs.

A compact model for multiterminal bipolar devices used in smart power applications

Complex technologies merging low-voltage bipolar devices and vertical current-flow power transistor allow more smart functions at low chip cost but pose problems during the design phase because there is no way to predict the influence of the high-voltage transistor over the control components by using standard bipolar junction transistor (BJT) models. In fact the large inductive load usually present in high-voltage power transistors applications forces both negative substrate voltage and spurious currents that can induce positive feedback among parasitic devices, downgrading the performance of a single device and so of the whole circuit. In this work we introduce a model for the five-terminal bipolar devices used in smart power applications. The model accounts for all main static and dynamic parasitic effects and gives results in very good agreement with experimental data on both simple devices and complex integrated circuits currently implemented in commercial products for microprocessor based engine management systems (EMSs).

Construction of VHDL-AMS simulator in Matlab

We describe the digital kernel implementation of the simulator S.A.M.S.A., a tool for the simulation of VHDL-AMS systems in Matlab/sup /spl trade//. The digital kernel was validated by simulating different systems. In particular we will show the simulation of a low-power multistage decimator for a wideband /spl Delta/-/spl Sigma/ analog to digital converter (ADC). This example was correctly simulated given the same results as other VHDL commercial tools.

A new VHDL-AMS simulation framework in Matlab

In this paper we present SAMSA, a new tool for the simulation of VHDL-AMS systems in MatlabTM. The goal is the definition of a VHDL framework in which analog/digital systems can be designed and simulated and new simulation techniques can be studied, ezploiting both the powerful MatlabTM functions and Toolbozes.

A Unified Approach for Modeling Multiterminal Bipolar and MOS Devices in Smart-Power Technologies

In this work we introduce compact models for both MOS and bipolar transistors used in an advanced smart power technology Deriving the topology of the model on the basis of physical structure and layout geometries we guarantee both physical meaning to model parameters an easy parameters extraction procedure and a similar model structure for parasitic components The models correctly pre dict in uence of parasitic couplings between each component and the collector of the power device showing good agreement with experi mental data

Automatic embedding of a ferroelectric capacitor inside the circuit simulator Eldo

In this paper we describe the implementation of a ferroelectric capacitor model inside a commercial circuit simulator by using IMAGe, a new versatile CAD tool to automatic embed semiconductor device models. By using IMAGe, user defined models can be developed quickly, allowing efficient simulation of even large circuits. To outline the performance improvement and flexibility obtained with our tool, we present comparisons with both simulation results of large memory array and simulation of HDL-A ferroelectric capacitor implementation.

A tool for the integration of new VHDL-AMS models in SPICE

In this work we describe a tool for VHDL-AMS modeling within SPICE based simulators. The user can write new SPICE models using VHDL-AMS standard, the proposed tool will automatically build the code to be embedded inside the SPICE simulator. A Smart Power band-gap reference voltage circuit and a recipe to build an advanced MOS model are presented as examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

A World Wide Web Teaching and Learning Environment Applied to Educational Courses in Microelectronics

This work describes a user-friendly interactive system developed for the World Wide Web to help students to deepen and verify basic concepts and notions in microelectronics. In particular, the presented tool enables to follow both the logic schedule of a course established by the teacher and an own reading sequence, overcoming classical approaches. This was done by exploiting the complex hypermedia nature of the devised text, that can be explored through suitable navigation panels and hypertext links to multimedia resources and several Internet services, mainly based on Java technology.

On the modelling of multiterminal bipolar devices for smart-power applications

Smart-power bipolar circuits cannot be correctly simulated by classical four terminal models. There is no way to predict the influence of the high-voltage transistor over the control components. This work introduces a five-terminal DC model for the low-voltage devices that takes into account all the parasitic effects introduced by the four-junction structure. The model parameters can be easily extracted by a manual procedure producing a good fit that can be further improved by an automatic optimization procedure.