Line-end shortening is not always a failure

Abstract

Line-end shortening (LES) has always been considered a catastrophic failure in circuits. However, we find that a device with some LES can continue to function correctly. Such devices have large drive current and reduced capacitance at the expense of much higher leakage current. In this paper, we investigate the power and performance characteristics of devices with LES. Our simulations show that LES does not always cause catastrophic failure of device functionality. However, in this regime LES can lead to parametric failures, aspects of which we investigate.