Lab 3 - ECE 421L 

Authored by Benjamin Molina, molinb1@unlv.nevada.edu

9/18/2023 

  

Lab description:

This lab will involve us using the DAC and N-wells that we built for previous labs and design a layout for the 10-bit DAC we designed.

 

Zipped Up Lab 3:

lab3.zip

 

Prelab:

The prelab for this lab merely backing up and saving your work from the last labs. Here I will show a few images to prove the validity of the components I built for this lab.

Below is proof that the n-well that was designed was at least 10k in value.

 

These images below show the layout of the voltage divider the is designed with these 10k n-wells then proof that the netlist of this and the schematic of a 10k voltage divider match up.

Now that we have all of those in order the next step is to create a new directory called lab3. I did this by copying the lab2 directory and renaming the copy to lab3. This makes sense since a majority of the work we need is from this library. We merely copy the n-well layout and schemtic for the voltage divider into the lab3 library as well.

 

Lab Procedure:

First we wish to check the MOSIS parameter files and see what we have for the sheet resistance. Which is about 796 ohms/sq according to the image below.

Using this knowledge we can do some calculations, but first we need the length and the width of the N-well I designed.

Most people used the minimal value of the n-well which was 12 lambda which ends up being 3.6um. I used 4.5um to make the n-taps fit better, all this means is that my width will have to change to accomadate this. 

The formula for R is as follows R = Rsq * l/w. So if we want to calculate a reasonble width for a 10k resistor we can calculate this.

l = (10k * 4.5u)/796 = 56.5um

We need this value to be a multiple of lambda and I increased it to a value of 63um since I put the n-taps within the n-well rectangle so that decreased the length between them. In the end I get 10.16k which is reasonably close meaning the final length between the n-taps should be around the calculated 56.5um but also a multiple of lambda.

 
Layout of DAC with N-wells:
We must now make 31 N-well resistors and space them put appropriately otherwise we will get a spacing error. The minimum amount of spacing we need between N-wells is 5.4um. The best way to create them is to set down one n-well using the i key then selecting it and pressing the c key to make a copy. Change amount of copies to 30 and make the spacing 10.05 in the delta y direction.

Next we simply need to wire the resistors appropriately and check for DRC errors. Below we can see that there are none for this design.

 
Now we must add an Output pin Vout, a Inputoutput pin gnd!, and 10 Input pins which are our [B9:0]  binary inputs. Then we must extract the layout so we can later LVS the design with the schematic of our original DAC design and ensure netlists match up. Extracted view should look like this.

Here we have checked that our DAC schematic and extracted view do indeed match up with their netlists which means we are all set and done with the lab.

Back up Proof:

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