In this work, the temperature effect on threshold voltage of a MOSFET with nonuniformly doped substrate is discussed. The concept of threshold surface potential is adopted so as to take the freeze out effect into consideration and to calculate the threshold voltage as a function of temperature. A new method of extracting the threshold voltage from experimental data, based on the definition of threshold surface potential, is also proposed. The extracted values fit well with the calculated threshold voltages in the temperature range of 80 to 300 K. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.