Analysis Approach on DMOS Transistor Vth Mismatch Due to Trapped Charges

An output switching malfunction was reported on a bridge driver IC. The electrical verification testing revealed evidence of an earlier over current condition resulting from an abnormal voltage sense during a switching event. Based on these test results, we developed the hypothesis that a threshold voltage mismatch existed between the sense transistor and the output transistor. This paper describes the failure analysis approach we used to characterize the threshold voltage mismatch as well as our approach to determine the root cause, which was trapped charge on the gate oxide of the sense transistor.