Performance enhancement of an ultra-scaled double-gate graphene nanoribbon tunnel field-effect transistor using channel doping engineering: Quantum simulation study

Abstract

In this paper, new graphene nanoribbon tunnel field-effect transistors (GNRTFETs) endowed with specific doping profiles are proposed, assessed, and compared with the conventional design through a computational investigation. The used quantum simulation is based on solving self-consistently the Poisson and Schrödinger equations using the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism in the ballistic limit. The numerical study deals with GNRTFET designs with 5 nm gate length while comparing their I-V transfer proprieties, subthreshold swing, charge density, current ratio, intrinsic delay, and power-delay product. The proposed designs, which are endowed with new doping profiles, have been found efficient in mitigating the direct source-to-drain tunneling issue of ultrascaled GNR-based TFET and in improving the ambipolar behavior while boosting the performance of the GNRTFETs. As interesting results, highly improved minimum leakage current, subthreshold swing, and switching parameters have been recorded by means of the proposed channel doping engineering-based approach. The obtained substantial improvements in the performance of ultrascaled GNRTFETs make the proposed approach as a promising way for the continual shrinking of tunnel field-effect transistors (sub-5-nm) while maintaining the required high-performance.