Dually Active Silicon Nanowire Transistors and Circuits with Equal Electron and Hole Transport

Abstract

We present novel multifunctional nanocircuits built from nanowire transistors that uniquely feature equal electron and hole conduction. Thereby, the mandatory requirement to yield energy efficient circuits with a single type of transistor is shown for the first time. Contrary to any transistor reported up to date, regardless of the technology and semiconductor materials employed, the dually active silicon nanowire channels shown here exhibit an ideal symmetry of current-voltage device characteristics for electron (n-type) and hole (p-type) conduction as evaluated in terms of comparable currents, turn-on threshold voltages, and switching slopes. The key enabler to symmetry is the selective tunability of the tunneling transmission of charge carriers as rendered by the combination of the nanometer-scale dimensions of the junctions and the application of radially compressive strain. To prove the advantage of this concept we integrated dually active transistors into cascadable and multifunctional one-dimensional circuit strings. The nanocircuits confirm energy efficient switching and can further be electrically configured to provide four different types of operation modes compared to a single one when employing conventional electronics with the same amount of transistors.

Configurable Circuits Featuring Dual-Threshold-Voltage Design With Three-Independent-Gate Silicon Nanowire FETs

“…This barrier height is achievable in actual process by using barrier height modulation technology [20], [21]. The symmetric n-type and p-type characteristics have also been observed in ambipolar SiNWFETs by applying radially compressive strain [22]. In our simulation, is applied.…”

“…In order to yield energy efficient circuits with a single type of transistor, symmetric n-type and p-type characteristics of ambipolar SiNWFETs are required [22]. Therefore, metallic source/drain with near mid-gap workfunction is preferred to achieve this symmetry.…”

“…Nevertheless, lower barrier height will result in larger leakage current and degraded ratio. Alternatively, radially compressive strain is applied in the ambipolar SiNWFET technology in recent research, and ideal symmetry of n-type and p-type characteristics is observed [22].…”

Reconfigurable U-shaped tunnel field-effect transistor

“…However, the industry as well as academia have agreed to the expectation that Moore's Law will be end-up in the near future after sub-10 nm node due to its fundamental scaling limit, increasing chip costs and power consumption [1]. A functional extension of switching elements has been regarded as an alternative approach for beyond Moore's Law by adding computational values [2]. Unlike to the conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices which have static electrical functions determined during the fabrication, reconfigurable FETs (RFETs) are dynamically programmable to n-or p-type FET by changing electric signals during the operation.…”

Configurable Logic Gates Using Polarity-Controlled Silicon Nanowire Gate-All-Around FETs

“…Among these novel devices are FD-SOIs, FinFETs, Graphene, Nanowires and Carbon Nanotube based FETs, featuring quasi two-and one-dimensional channel geometries for better electrostatics. Whereas many of these innovations only focus on developing high-performance devices, the creation of a roadmap to predict in-circuit performance and large scale integration for these technologies is highly desirable [1]- [3]. Moreover, new functionalities can be exploited at scaled technology nodes.…”