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Microwave imaging of nanoelectronic devices has turned a simple reflection coefficient measurement, usually carried out by a 50- $\Omega $ vector-network analyzer, into a high-impedance instrumentation challenge. Interferometry-based reflectometers (IBR) have been found to be successful solutions in addressing this challenge. However, such solutions do not consider instrumentation of high impedance and high frequency as well as minimization of environment variations in a comprehensive manner. In this paper, these aspects are addressed jointly through the proposal of a fully integrated IBR in the STMicroelectronics BiCMOS 55-nm technology. Three varactor samples having a capacitance ranging from 0.65 to 0.95 fF are measured at 17.6 GHz for demonstration. The fully integrated IBR achieved a magnitude error below −35 dB, a phase error below 0.03°, and an accuracy better than 59.7 aF. Moreover, $C$ – $V$ slope measurement error is better than 2.8 aF, which is ten times smaller than found in the state-of-the-art IBR. Such betterment is explained by the monolithic integration of IBR and device-under-test as implemented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanometer-scaled communication devices for microwave and millimeter wave applications motivated innovative techniques in modeling and characterization. In this letter, an interferometry-based reflectometer (IBR), comprising Vector Network Analyser (VNA) and commercial devices, is implemented. Using sub-fF 130 nm thick-oxide accumulation MOS varactors from ST Microelectronics, IBR and VNA measurements are compared to a silicon-based model. A capacitance from 0.9 to 1.6 fF around 6.8 GHz is estimated. IBR demonstrates a root-mean-squared (RMS) error related to silicon-based model of 60 aF, while VNA has 70 aF in its best case. The mean accuracy is estimated at 40 aF and 11 aF respectively for VNA best case and IBR in C-V measurements. This letter demonstrates that IBR solution has smaller RMS error and better accuracy for C-V measurements than VNA. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accumulation MOS varactors on the low-power CMOS 28-nm fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI) are presented with a minimum gate length of 43 nm. This process enable to improve the varactors quality factor (Q-factor) at high frequency, which can be employed for CMOS-based millimeter-wave (MMW) applications. Measured results up to 110 GHz show relatively high Q-factor close to 10 and relatively low series resistance for a conventional multifinger MOS varactors. The proposed MOS varactor is expected to improve the overall Q-factor of the inductor capacitor resonator (LC) tank of MMW oscillators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]