Physical Modeling of Graphene Nanoribbon Field Effect Transistor Using Non-Equilibrium Green Function Approach for Integrated Circuit Design

Abstract

The driving engine for the exponential growth of digital information processing systems is scaling down the transistor dimensions. For decades, this has enhanced the device performance and density. However, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) states the end of Moore’s law in the next decade due to the scaling challenges of silicon-based CMOS electronics, e.g. extremely high power density. The forward-looking solutions are the utilization of emerging materials and devices for integrated circuits. The Ph.D. dissertation focuses on graphene, one atomic layer of carbon sheet, experimentally discovered in 2004. Since fabrication technology of emerging materials is still in early stages, transistor modeling has been playing an important role for evaluating futuristic graphene-based devices and circuits. The GNR FET has been simulated by solving a numerical quantum transport model based on self-consistent solution of the 3D Poisson equation and 1D Schrödinger equations within the non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) formalism. The quantum transport model fully treats short channel-length electrostatic effects and the quantum tunneling effects, leading to the technology exploration of graphene nanoribbon field effect transistors (GNRFETs) for the future. A comprehensive study of static metrics and switching attributes of GNRFET has been presented including the performance dependence of device characteristics to the GNR width and the scaling of its channel length down to 2.5 nanometer. It has been found that increasing the GNR width deteriorate the off-state performance of the GNRFET, such that, narrower armchair GNRs improved the device robustness to short channel effects, leading to better off-state performance considering smaller off-current, larger ION/IOFF ratio, smaller subthreshold swing and smaller drain-induced barrier-lowering. The wider armchair GNRs allow the scaling of channel length and supply voltage resulting in better on-state performance such as higher drive current, smaller intrinsic gate-delay time and smaller power-delay product. In addition, the width-dependent characteristics of GNR FETs is investigated for two GNR semiconducting families (3p,0) and (3p+1,0). It has been found that the GNRs(3p+1,0) demonstrates superior off-state performance, while, on the other hand, GNRs(3p,0) shows superior on-state performance. Thus, GNRs(3p+1,0) are promising for low-power design, while GNRs(3p,0) indicate a more preferable attribute for high frequency applications.