Thermal Impacts of Backside Power Delivery Networks on GAAFET Technology

The emerging backside power delivery network (BSPDN) technology offers significant advantages in area scaling, IR drop reduction, and operating frequency enhancement. In this work, we systematically investigate the thermal dissipation mechanisms associated with various BSPDN architectures and develop SPICE-compatible dynamic thermal models to facilitate model-driven evaluation for electrical and thermal dynamics at the device-circuit level. A comprehensive evaluation, coupled with the previously developed parasitic model, reveals that the parasitic effects dominate circuit dynamic performance compared to self-heating effects (SHEs), while the SHE exacerbates device degradation mechanisms, such as hot carrier injection (HCI) and bias temperature instability (BTI).

Evaluation results indicate that backside contacts (BSCs) are more capable of suppressing SHEs and parasitic effects, while through silicon via in middle-of-line (MOL) (TSVM)-based circuits experience pronounced performance degradation, enabling a model-driven tradeoff strategy for circuit optimization in advanced technology.