Substrate bias effect of epitaxial delta-doped channel MOS transistor for low-power applications

Abstract

ABSTRACTConventional planar transistor shows shrinking substrate bias effect at scaled technology. On the other hand, epitaxial delta-doped channel (EδDC) transistor shows substantial amount of substrate bias effect even at 16-nm channel length. This paper unveils the physics behind the substrate bias effect of an n-channel EδDC transistor through Technology Computer Aided Design simulation with analytical justifications. The depletion width for an EδDC transistor very weakly depends upon the applied substrate bias, and with scaling down of channel length, the depletion width insignificantly gets widened. The substrate control over the channel is high so that significant amount of substrate depletion charge terminates on the gate, instead of on the source and the drain. The degradation of threshold voltage roll off and drain-induced barrier lowering coefficient with the increase of substrate bias, is less for the EδDC transistor, compared to that of a conventional halo free transistor. The dependence of the substrate bias sensitivity on the thickness of the low-doped epitaxial layer and concentration of the high-doped layer is explored. The effects of reverse substrate bias on leakage power dissipation and intrinsic delay of EδDC and conventional transistors are discussed.