1.
Recall of Basics:
● Resistor, capacitors, inductor.
● Resistivity, conductivity, transconductance, insulator, conductor, semiconductor, dielectric.
● Voltage, current, electric field, workfunction, electron affinity, permeability, permittivity.
● Charge carrier, mobility, drift current, diffusion current.
● Doping, intrinsic, n & p type semiconductor.
● Diode structure (p-n junction), space charge region, depletion layer, diode in reverse bias and
forward bias, breakdown, i-v characteristics, charge neutrality, energy-band diagram.
● Diode applications: rectifier, level shifters, clipper, clamper.
● Shockttey diode, structure, energy band diagram, significance.
● Basic structure of BJT, operating regions, i-v characteristics, operating point, biasing,
significance of biasing, early effect.
● Transconductance of BJT.
2. MOSFET:
● What is FET?
● Structure of MOSFET.
● Types of MOSFET: Depletion mode, enhancement mode, nMOS, pMOS.
● Threshold voltage, significance of threshold, channel creation, depletion, channel inversion.
● MOSFET operating regions, i-v characteristics.
● MOSFET operation in linear, saturation in depth analysis.
● Channel length modulation, early voltage.
● Transconductance of MOSFET, effect of transconductance.
● Technology node and its significance.
● Short channel effects: Drain-Induced Barrier Lowering (DIBL), Subthreshold Conduction,
Impact Ionization, Hot Carrier Injection (HCI), Velocity Saturation, Surface Scattering and
Mobility Degradation.
● Body effect.
3. CMOS:
● What is CMOS?
● Basic CMOS inverter, operation, transfer characteristics, latch-up effect.
● Design criteria for stability and symmetrical operation.
● Transmission gate or pass gate.
● Advantages and constraints of CMOS.
4. MOSFET Advanced:
● SOI technology, FDSOI, PDSOI.
● Structure of FDSOI, PDSOI.
● Advantages and disadvantages of FDSOI, PDSOI comparing to bulk MOSFETs.
● What is multi gate MOSFET?
● FinFET, structure of FinFET, structural comparison between bulk MOSFET and FinFET.
● Difference between FinFET and trigate MOSFETs.
● Types of FinFET, Shorted-Gate FinFET, Isolated or Independent-Gate FinFET.
● Structure of asymmetric gate FinFET (ASG FinFET), advantages of ASG FinFET.
● Design challenges: Corner effect, Fabrication complexity, extraction of parasitics, quantum
effects, width quantization, double patterning, layout dependencies, performance and variability.
● Gate all around MOSFET basics.
5. Op-Amp:
● Basic structure, characteristics of ideal and practical op-amp.
● Input and output impedances.
● Open loop and closed loop gains.
● Different types of amplifier configuration: Inverting, noninverting, differential, integrator,
differentiator.
● Input output offset voltages.
● Virtual ground.
● Op-Amp at saturation.
6. Fabrication:
● What is IC fabrication?
● Sequence of fabrication: Silicon manufacturing, silicon processing, wafer processing,
lithography, etching, depositions, chemical-mechanical polishing, growth and elimination of
oxide layers, ion implantation, diffusion, annealing, silicon deposition, metallization, testing,
assembly & packaging.
7. Miscellaneous:
● Fin, finger, multiplier.
● Clock gating, zitter.
● Set up time, hold time, rise delay, fall delay.
● Propagation delay, contamination delay.
● Skew time.
● Electrostatic discharge (ESD).
● Fan-in, fan-out.
● Crosstalk, antenna effect in ICs.
