The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 26, 2010
Filed:
Apr. 19, 2005
Ashok Kumar Kapoor, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Ashok Kumar Kapoor, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Semi Solutions, LLC, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for the reduction of gate leakage in deep sub-micron metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) transistors, especially useful for those used in a cross coupled static random access memory (SRAM) cell, is disclosed. In accordance with the invention, the active element of the SRAM cell is used to reduce the voltage on the gate of its transistor without impacting the switching speed of the circuit. Because the load on the output of the inverter is fixed, a reduction in the gate current is optimized to minimize the impact on the switching waveform of the memory cell. An active element formed by two materials with different Fermi potentials is used as a rectifying junction or diode. The rectifying junction also has a large parallel leakage path, which allows a finite current flow when a signal of opposite polarity is applied across this device.