Dynamic power supply current testing for open defects in CMOS SRAMs

The detection of open defects in CMOS SRAM has been a time consuming process. This paper proposes a new dynamic power supply current testing method to detect open defects in CMOS SRAM cells. By monitoring a dynamic current pulse during a transition write operation or a read operation, open defects can be detected. In order to measure the dynamic power supply current pulse, a current monitoring circuit with low hardware overhead is developed. Using the sensor, the new testing method does not require any additional test sequence. The results show that the new test method is very efficient compared with other testing methods. Therefore, the new testing method is very attractive.