A reversible first-order dispersive model of parametric instability

•A new parametric instability compact model for microelectronic devices.•Periodic stimuli of arbitrary waveform are addressed.•Model implementable in commercial simulators without resorting to external software.•Provided with a NBTI case study with gate bias and temperature dependence included.

A general purpose instability model is derived for the variation of device parameters which is related to the activation–deactivation of statistically independent microscopic defects, with reversible first-order reaction kinetics and distributed rate constants. The model is aimed at predicting the parametric instability of electronic devices under periodic AC stimulus of arbitrary waveform over a wide time-scale range covering the whole device lifetime. As a practical application, we extracted a model for the negative-bias temperature instability of a p-channel type silicon MOSFET, including both the recovery effects and the voltage–temperature dependence. The model can be implemented in commercially available tools for the compact simulation of integrated circuits.