Electronics/MOSFET

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor

CMOS , Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor is not a type of transistor. It is a logic family, based on MOS transistors.

Construction & Operation

CMOS is made of two FETs blocking the positive and negative voltages. Since only one FET can be on at a time, CMOS consumes negligible power during any of the logic states. But when a transition between states occurs, power is consumed by the device. This power consumed is of two types.

Short-circuit power

For a very short duration, both transistors are on and a very huge current flows through the device for that duration. This current accounts for about 10% of the total power consumed by the CMOS.

Dynamic power

This is due to charge stored on the parasitic capacitance of the output node of the device. This parasitic capacitance depends on the wire's area, and closeness to other layers of metal in the IC, besides the relative permittivity of the quartz layer separating consecutive metal layers. It also depends (to a much smaller extent) upon the input capacitance of the next logic gate. This capacitance delays the rise in the output voltage and hence the rise or fall in the output of a gate is more like a that in a resistor-capacitor (RC) network. Thus the dynamic power consumed due to switching action in one gate is given by:

${\displaystyle P_{d}=CV_{d}^{2}f}$