Progress:
This week, our team completed and submitted the final Design Review (DR) report while continuing to build out the characterization-driven foundation of the project. A major step forward was that we were able to move beyond only completing fabrication of the template NMOS devices and instead begin organizing, analyzing, and interpreting real first-iteration measurement data, including NMOS I–V behavior, resistor/TLM measurements, and MOSCAP C–V trends. This gave the team a much stronger quantitative understanding of current device behavior and helped convert several earlier design assumptions into more concrete, measured expectations. Overall, this week marked an important transition from initial fabrication success into a more grounded characterization-to-design feedback loop.
Schedule/Updates:
Overall, the project remains on schedule. With the Design Review report completed and first-pass characterization data now available, we are in a much better position to refine our device and oscillator assumptions using measured silicon behavior rather than relying primarily on estimates. Compared to last week, the team now has stronger footing in understanding threshold variation, drive current, leakage behavior, resistor scaling, and MOSCAP trends, all of which are important for the next design phase. This means we can now progress more confidently, in line with our planned schedule, toward finalizing a potential oscillator design and fabrication steps.
Upcoming Deliverables
Next week, the team’s priorities are to continue supporting characterization where needed based on the current fabrication results, translate the measured device behavior into concrete oscillator design constraints, and finalize an updated project schedule for moving forward. Most importantly, by the end of this week, we need to guarantee that we finalize a viable oscillator design and begin its initial fabrication steps so that the project continues progressing on a realistic implementation timeline. In addition, we will need to flesh out a more concrete fabrication and iteration timeline as we begin executing on our first oscillator design, as we did during our template NMOS run in February.