Simulation and experimental verification: Dopant-free Si-nanowire CMOS technology on silicon-on-insulator material

Abstract

In CMOS technology, NMOS- and PMOS-FETs are hardware defined by choosing the appropriate doping of source (S) and drain (D) junctions with respect to the substrate. However, in this work we report on a novel CMOS multi-gate (MG) nanowire field-effect transistor (NWFET) architecture on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) material which is virtually free of doping. The MG-NWFETs are originally ambipolar nanowire devices with midgap Schottky-barriers serving as S/D contacts. A tri-gate structure is used as front-gate for current control across the NWFET whereas a planar back-gate is used to select the desired unipolar device type (i.e. NMOS or PMOS) via field-induced accumulation of electrons or holes, respectively. Both, logic and memory devices can be realized with the same simple nanowire structure. By means of 2D and 3D device simulation and subsequent experimental verification the potential of this novel reconfigurable device and circuit architecture will be demonstrated.