The Use of Quantum Potentials for Confinement and Tunnelling in Semiconductor Devices

Abstract

As MOSFETs are scaled to sub 100 nm dimensions, quantum mechanical confinement in the direction normal to the silicon dioxide interface and tunnelling (through the gate oxide, band-to-band and from source-to-drain) start to strongly affect their characteristics. Recently it has been demonstrated that first order quantum corrections can be successfully introduced in self-consistent drift diffusion-type models using Quantum Potentials. In this paper we describe the introduction of such quantum corrections within a full 3D drift diffusion simulation framework. We compare the two most popular quantum potential techniques: density gradient and the effective potential approaches, in terms of their justification, accuracy and computational efficiency. The usefulness of their 3D implementation is demonstrated with examples of statistical simulations of intrinsic fluctuation effects in decanano MOSFETs introduced by discrete random dopants. We also discuss the capability of the density gradient formalism to handle direct source-to-drain tunnelling in sub 10 nm double-gate MOSFETS, illustrated in comparison with Non-Equilibrium Green's Functions simulations.