The Impact of Width Downscaling on the High-Frequency Characteristics of InGaAs Nanowire FETs

Abstract

This work demonstrates the high-frequency characteristics of In0.53Ga0.47As nanowire with scaled wire width by implementing TCAD simulations. The physical models and correlated parameters have been calibrated to the experiments in the literature 19. As the width of the nanowire is scaled to 10 nm, the electron density peaks are no longer located close to the oxide/semiconductor interface. Instead, the peaks merge and volume inversion effects appear due to the strong quantum confinement. The volume inversion effects lead to higher cut-off frequency due to the reduced total transport delay time. To have a better understanding of this phenomena, the high-frequency properties of nanowire were quantified with the assistance of small-signal analysis and delay time analysis using TCAD. It is found that the channel charging delay increases with narrower wire width due to the raise of source/drain resistance. Regarding the extrinsic and intrinsic delay, they increase with smaller wire width and drop at width of 10 nm due to the volume inversion effects. Electron distribution which aims to clarify the abovementioned observation is also plotted.