Schottky‐barrier graphene nanoribbon field‐effect transistors‐based field‐programmable gate array's configurable logic block and routing switch

Abstract

Configurable electronic devices have been developed to provide more flexibility in the advanced digital system design, which needs more device density and there by relies on device scaling. Besides, International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor (ITRS) has predicted scaling limitation for conventional silicon (Si)-based devices. Researches on post-Si materials have proved that carbon could be one of the material which can replaced with Si. Owing to exceptional properties of graphene, designs with graphene-based devices can replace with Si based ones. This study proposes design and characterisation of graphene-based simple field-programmable gate array as a platform of configurable logic structure for future developments. This study focuses on design and characterisation of configurable logic block (CLB), flip-flop as internal sequential logic devices in CLB, and routing switch, which are designed using graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor (GNRFET). The results indicate that proposed CLB is much faster than Si based one and power-delay product of proposed sequential element is much lesser than its counterpart in Si-based technology. In addition, the proposed GNRFET-based routing switch requires minimum count of 6 transistors to provide desirable functionality. Foreseeing the feasibility of architecture, this study suggests the possible layout of the proposed logic elements needed for CLB.

All-Graphene Nano-Ribbon FET Based Complete FPGA Design

“…The DFF which stores input and synchronizes it with the clock pulse. 31 The Master-Slave and MUX design approach with GNRFET has been investigated in, 30 due to better timing parameters we re-use the same Master-Slave style here. Figure 3 shows the DFF design as two series-connected GNRFET based latches.…”

“…1,28,29 Carbon-based reconfiguration is addressed and investigated by introducing a logic building block and programmable routing box. 30 The contribution of this paper is in optimizing CLB design and also adding graphene I/O block design along with complete circuit design, analysis, and characterization. The aim is to investigate the design and feasibility of all-carbon FPGA using SB-GNRFET; moreover, it deals with the characterization of building blocks of proposed devices through statistical parameters analysis and Monte-Carlo simulations.…”

Graphene Nanoribbon Field-Effect Transistors-Based Digital General-Purpose Input/Output Block

“…Graphene, one of the carbon allotropes, is a two-dimensional material that expanded in a hexahedron lattice which has attracted lots of attention recently. 3,5,13,27 The unique electrical properties of graphene, such as high heat transfer coefficient and high mobility, have made it the most feasible alternative for silicon in the future electronics industry. 33 In intrinsic form, it has been discovered, 34 then a field-effect transistor fabrication, whose channel was made of the graphene nanoribbon is reported.…”

“…In this circuit diagram compared to Fig. 2, the internal schematic of Flip-Flops and MUXs are already studied, 26,27 and not shown for simplicity. Figure 5 also represents the symbol used for GNRFETs.…”

“…26 a graphene-based flip-flop and in Ref. 27 an FPGA's configurable logic block is designed and simulated. Another study deal with mixed-signal design with a comparative approach.…”