Abstract
We investigate the operation of dual-gate reconfigurable field-effect transistor (RFET) in the programgate at drain (PGAD) and program-gate at source (PGAS) configurations. To this end, dual-gate silicon nanowire (SiNW) FETs are fabricated based on anisotropic wet chemical silicon etching and nickel silicidation yielding silicide-SiNW Schottky junctions at source and drain. Whereas in PGAD-configuration ambipolar operation is suppressed, switching is deteriorated due to the injection through a Schottky-barrier. Operating the RFET in PGAS configuration yields a switching behavior close to a conventional MOSFET. This, howewer, needs to be traded off against strongly non-linear output characteristics for small bias.
Highlights
I N RECENT years, device scaling close to the physical limit has spurred the move from geometrical to equivalent scaling [1] of conventional MOSFETs utilizing new device architectures, materials, and integration schemes to continue delivering integrated circuits with higher density and improved performance
While unipolar device operation is obtained with this program gate at drain (PGAD) mode, the inverse subthreshold slope is significantly larger than 60 mV/decade
We investigate the rather overlooked device operation mode with the program gate at source (PGAS) and compare it with the PGAD
Summary
I N RECENT years, device scaling close to the physical limit has spurred the move from geometrical to equivalent scaling [1] of conventional MOSFETs utilizing new device architectures, materials, and integration schemes to continue delivering integrated circuits with higher density and improved performance (power, speed). The statistical nature of ion implantation and dopant diffusion during an activation anneal makes it hard to implement well-defined potential profiles with sharp interface transitions within a small volume of semiconductor material This leads to a variability in threshold voltage Vth from device to device due to random dopant distribution effects [3]. Reconfigurable field-effect transistors (RFETs) have attracted increasing attention because they utilize electrostatic doping to create virtual n-/p-regions avoiding dopant-related issues They can be tuned to operate as n-/p-transistors with unipolar device operation similar to conventional MOSFETs [4]–[8]. While unipolar device operation is obtained with this program gate at drain (PGAD) mode, the inverse subthreshold slope is significantly larger than 60 mV/decade. PGAD and PGAS show a distinctly different nonlinearity in the output characteristics with a stronger effect in the PGAS mode
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