Harmonic and intermodulation performance of carbon nanotube field-effect transistor-based and single-electron tunnelling transistor-based inverting amplifiers

Abstract

This article presents a simple mathematical model for the output-voltage/input-voltage characteristics of the carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET)-based and the single-electron tunnelling transistor (SET)-based inverting amplifiers. The model, basically a Fourier-series, yields closed-form expressions for the amplitudes of the harmonic and intermodulation components of the output voltage resulting from a multisinusoidal input voltage. The special case of a two-tone equal-amplitude input signal is considered in detail. The results show that the harmonic and intermodulation performance of the CNTFET-based and SET-based inverting amplifiers is strongly dependent on the values of the bias voltage and the amplitudes of the input tones. Moreover, the results show that for the CNTFET-based inverting amplifier, either the relative second-order or the relative third-order intermodulation component is dominant, while for the SET-based inverting amplifier, the relative third-order intermodulation is always dominant. The results also show that all the harmonics and intermodulation products may exhibit minima at different values of the input bias voltages and tone amplitudes.