New nanoscale band-to-band tunneling junctionless GNRFETs: potential high-performance devices for the ultrascaled regime

Abstract

High-performance sub-10-nm field-effect transistors (FETs) are considered to be a prerequisite for the development of nanoelectronics and modern integrated circuits. Herein, new band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) junctionless (JL) graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors (GNRFETs) endowed with sub-10-nm gate length are proposed using a quantum transport simulation. The nonequilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) formalism is used in quantum simulations considering the self-consistent electrostatics and the ballistic transport limit. The computational assessment includes the IDS–VGS transfer characteristics, the potential and electron density distributions, the current spectrum, the ambipolar behavior, the leakage current, the subthreshold swing, the current ratio, and the scaling capability. It is found that BTBT JL-GNRFETs can provide subthermionic subthreshold swings and moderate current ratios for sub-10-nm gate lengths. Moreover, a new doping profile, based on the use of lateral lightly n-type-doped pockets, is adopted to boost their performance. The numerical results reveal that BTBT JL-GNRFETs with the proposed doping profile can exhibit improved performance in comparison with uniformly doped BTBT JL-GNRFETs. In addition, the role of the length and n-type doping concentration of the pockets in boosting the device performance is also studied and analyzed while considering the scaling capability of such devices, revealing that low doping concentrations and long pocket lengths are useful for performance improvement. The merits of the BTBT JL-GNRFETs based on the proposed nonuniform doping profile, namely sub-10-nm scale, steep subthermionic subthreshold swing, low leakage current, and improved current ratio and ambipolar behavior, make them promising nanodevices for use in modern nanoelectronics and high-performance integrated circuits.