Triggering and sustaining of snapback in MOSFETs

The paper analyzes the phenomenon of snapback (negative resistance region of the output characteristic) in MOSFETs. It shows that the expansion of the base of the parasitic bipolar transistor with drain bias provides the necessary basis for the understanding of the snapback mechanism. The R sub bottoming-out, resulting from the expansion, and the association of this phenomenon with the triggering of snapback is shown to be here a key point. This result may have some important practical implications since it not only provides simple criteria for the snapback triggering and sustaining (lacking to date) but also hints on how to shift the snapback towards higher drain bias.