Performance Evaluation and Design Considerations of Electrically Activated Drain Extension Tunneling GNRFET: A Quantum Simulation Study

Abstract

In this paper, a tunneling graphene nanoribbon field effect transistor with electrically activated drain extension, namely, EA-T-GNRFET, is proposed. The proposed structure includes a side gate at the drain side with a constant voltage and length of 0.4 V and 15 nm, respectively. Simulations are performed based on the non-equilibrium Green’s function method coupled with the Poisson equation in the mode space representation. This side gate creates an additional step in potential profile at the drain side, which increases and decreases the width of tunneling barrier and leakage current, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed structure has lower drain induced barrier thinning, lower sub-threshold swing (SS) and higher I ON/I OFF ratio than the conventional structure. Also, other characteristics of the device such as switching delay ( $$ \tau $$ ), power delay product (PDP) and unity-gain frequency (f t) are improved in the proposed device. These advantages make EA-T-GNRFET more suitable for digital and analog applications.