Lab 5 - ECE 421L

Authored by Ruben Medina
E-mail: medina72@unlv.nevada.edu
Date: 10/4/13

Design, Layout, and Simulation of a CMOS inverter

Pre-lab

To backup my library and labs I first zipped the folders.

Zipping folders

I then uploaded the zipped folder to Dropbox.

Uploading zipped folders to Dropbox

I then went through Tutorial 3 located here.


Lab

To begin with I started by drafting the schematic and icon for a 20/10 inverter where the 20 is the width of the PMOS and 10 is the width of the NMOS.

Schematic of 20/10 inverter

Next, I did the layout for the 20/10 inverter.

20/10 Inverter Layout

Next, I made a schematic for simulation of the inverter with capacitive loads by making a schematic cell and dragging the icon I created into the cell.

I also used off page nodes to export the input and output of the inverter.

Simulation schematic for 20/10 inverter

First, I used a capacitive load of 100fF which can be seen above.

The LTspice sim can be seen below:

20/10 inverter 100f LTspice

The ALS sim can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter ALS Simulation

For the ALS simulation, I set the input by moving the cursor to 40ns, then clicked the IN_ button and pressed V to set the waveform high.

I also expanded the waveform size by clicking the button with outward pointing arrows next to "Panel 1".

The IRSIM can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter 100f IRSIM Simulation

Next, I ran simulations for a 1pF capacitive load.

The LTspice sim can be seen below:

20/10 inverter 1p LTspice

The ALS sim can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter 1p ALS Simulation

The IRSIM can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter 1p IRSIM Simulation

Finally, I ran simulations with a 10pF capacitive load.

The LTspice sim can be seen below:

20/10 inverter 10p LTspice

The ALS sim can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter 10p ALS Simulation

The IRSIM can be seen below:

20/10 Inverter 10p IRSIM Simulation

From the simulation results of the various capacitances we can see that the LTspice simulations do not change based on the capacitance due to not taking into account the delay introduced by the capacitors.

We can also see that the delays of all of the ALS simulations were all ~10ns. This is because ALS is a logic simulator and does not model transistors during simulation.

IRSIM on the other hand, does model the transistors and we can see that by the increasing delays of the IRSIM simulations of 0.243ns, 2.342ns, and 23.28ns.


Next, I drafted the schematic and icon for the 100/50 inverter by duplicating the 20/10 inverter cell group and adding a multiplier to the PMOS and NMOS transistors in the schematic.

This was done by going to Tools -> Simulation(Spice) -> Add Multiplier

Adding multiplier to transistors


Schematic and icon for 100/50 inverter

I then did the layout for the schematic by taking the 20/10 layout, changing the size of the vdd and gnd p-wells and n-wells, copying all of the NMOS and PMOS transistors 4 times, and adding all the required connections.

100/50 inverter layout


Next, I made a schematic for the capacitance simulations by making a new cell and dragging the 100/50 icon into the cell.

Simulation schematic for 100/50 Inverter

I then ran simulations for the 100f, 1p, and 10p capacitive loads similarly to the 20/10 inverter.


For the 100fF capacitive load:

The LTspice sim:

100/50 Inverter 100f LTspice simulation

The ALS sim:

100/50 Inverter 100f ALS simulation

The IRSIM simulation:

100/50 Inverter 100f IRSIM simulation

For the 1pF capacitive load:

The LTspice sim:

100/50 Inverter 1p LTspice simulation

The ALS simulation:

100/50 Inverter 1p ALS simulation

The IRSIM simulation:

100/50 Inverter 1p IRSIM simulation

For the 10pF capacitive load:

The LTspice sim:

100/50 Inverter 10p LTspice simulation

The ALS simulation:

100/50 Inverter 10p ALS simulation

The IRSIM simulation:

100/50 Inverter 10p IRSIM simulation

From these simulations we can see again that the LTspice simulations do not change based on capacitance and the delay of the ALS simulations is a constant ~10ns due to not modeling transistors during the simulation.

We can also see that the IRSIM simulations do model the transistors and have an increasing delay based on the increasing capacitance of 0.252ns, 2.327ns, and 23.28ns.

Essentially the simulated delays of the two inverters are the same even though the amount of transistors is different between them.


My electric library file containing my inv_20_10_RLM, inv_20_10_RLM_sim, inv_100_50_RLM, and inv_100_50_RLM_sim can be found here.


To finish the lab I zipped my lab and library folder as seen below:

Zipping folders for backup

I then uploaded the zipped file to Dropbox.

Uploading zipped backup file to Dropbox


Return to my list of labs