Concept

Subthreshold conduction — where it appears

The current a field-effect device carries below the threshold voltage, which falls exponentially rather than to zero. Its decade slope is a junction's own slope multiplied by a factor above one that depends on the device's construction, so it sets the lowest current at which a bias point can be placed.

Named by 2 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

Also named here as transconductance efficiency — the same set of essays touches all of them, so they are one junction rather than several.

The square law is within 1% over a factor of 1.06 in overdrive. computed by solving, not by drawing. One field-effect device drawn against the two models it is between: the square law, which is zero below threshold and rises as the square of the overdrive, and the weak-inversion exponential, which rises at 77.4 mV per decade. The device is neither and approaches both. The two errors point opposite ways — the subthreshold current lifts it above the square law below, and velocity saturation holds it below above — so the square law is exact at 156.5 mV and the shaded band is where it is inside 1%: 152.0 mV to 161.7 mV, a factor of 1.06. The slider is the velocity-saturation voltage, which is the channel length times a critical field, so what it moves is the band's width and not its position.

The exponent that is a square

Every device in this collection so far has been an exponential, and the whole of its arithmetic — 59.5 millivolts a decade, a distortion edge at 1.03 millivolts, 3,333 parts per million a kelvin — comes out of that one law. A field-effect device obeys a different one, and the interesting part is that it obeys both: an exponential below threshold and a square above it. The square law is within one per cent over a factor of 1.06 in overdrive at half a micron, and the two errors that bound it point opposite ways.

semiconductors · Square law

The band closes over a stage's own bias at 7.93 microns. computed by solving, not by drawing. The overdrive over which the square law is within 1.0 per cent, against the channel length that sets it — the velocity-saturation voltage is Ec·L, so the axis is a size and not a bias. The shaded region is the band; the curve through it is the overdrive at which the square law is exact, which exists at every length because the subthreshold and velocity-saturation errors have opposite signs. Both edges move: the lower one from 79.6 mV to 252.9 mV and the upper from 81.2 mV to 1200.0 mV, so the band is a factor of 1.021 at 0.050 µm and 4.7 at 30 µm. The fourth curve is the overdrive a common-source stage with a fixed gate voltage and a fixed source resistor solves to, which barely moves at all; it leaves the band at 7.929 microns and is outside it for every shorter device. What the square law would have said about that stage is the last two rows: 220 per cent too much current on the 0.050 µm device and 53 per cent too much efficiency, against 0.15 and 0.66 per cent at 30 µm.

The length that is a voltage

The square law's band is closed from above by a parameter that is not a bias, a current or a temperature: it is the channel length, wearing a voltage's units. Swept, the band goes from a factor of 4.74 on a thirty-micron device to 1.021 at fifty nanometres — and the overdrive a stage actually biases itself to barely moves at all, so the two cross at 7.93 microns and every shorter device is biased outside the band. The band was also measured in the wrong quantity: the square law is exact in the current somewhere at every length, and its error in the transconductance is never below 42.5 per cent at fifty nanometres and reaches one per cent only above 6.502 microns.

semiconductors · Square law

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Model range Overdrive voltage Square law Transconductance Transconductance efficiency Velocity-saturation Channel length Design tradeoff Operating point

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