Source material valuation of charge plasma based DG-TFET for RFIC applications

Abstract

This paper seeks to present a comprehensive analysis to check the viability of four different source materials in a charge plasma-based double gate tunnel field effect transistor (CP-DGTFET) as RF/microwave systems components. This work aims to provide a comparative study of the electrical and analog parameters of three devices (labeled as D-II, D-III, D-IV) with Si0.5Ge0.5, Ge, Mg2Si as the source material with a conventional Si source homojunction CP-DGTFET (referred as D-I). In addition, linearity and distortion are investigated. The selection of the source material illustrates the effect on the band structure at heterojunctions, as a combined effect of low bandgap and electron affinities of the material used. Results obtained through numerical simulations show that the device D-IV with Mg2Si source shows excellent performance parameters with maximum I ON (4.6 × 10−3 A µm−1) and minimum V th (0.26 V). Also, the switching ratio (1013) and SS (10.89 mV/decade) offered by D-IV is the best among all four devices investigated. Various linearity FOM’s viz. transconductance and its higher order derivatives (g m , g m2 , g m3), higher order voltage intercept points (V IP2 , V IP3), third-order intercept input power, third-order intermodulation distortion, 1 dB compression point, 2nd and 3rd order harmonic distortion, and total harmonic distortions (THD) have also been examined. All of this research was carried out using the Atlas Silvaco simulation tool. This study reveals that the Mg2Si source CP-DGTFET is best suited for high-frequency, low-power and high linearity applications in modern communication systems.