TABLE OF CONTENTS MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) was fabricated for the first time in 1960, only a year after the beginning of the integrated circuit era in 1959. The MOSFET became the basic building block of very large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuits, therefore becoming the most important microelectronic device. Huge investments have been made in what is known as CMOS technology, a technology used to manufacture circuits consisting of complementary pairs of MOSFETs. Those investments, having been quite favorable, consequently led to the rapid progress in computer and communication integrated circuits that we have seen in the past decades.
However, the application of MOSFETs is not limited to VLSI circuits. MOSFETs play an important role in power-electronic circuits, and are becoming increasingly popular and suitable for microwave applications.
This chapter explains MOSFET principles and characteristics, introduces MOSFET technologies, and describes MOSFET models and parameters used in circuit simulation. The metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitor, dealt with in Section 2.5, represents the basis of MOSFET. Therefore, a good grasp of the effects explained in the MOS capacitor section is necessary for an effective understanding of this chapter. Also, the MOSFET involves two P-N junctions, which means the P-N junction concepts introduced in Sections 2.2 and 3.1 need to be understood as well.
As indicated above, the MOSFET is developed from the MOS capacitor. The voltage applied to the gate of the MOS capacitor (refer to Fig. 2.12) controls the state of the silicon surface underneath (this is the P-type Si-SiO
