Three-to-one analog signal modulation with a single back-bias-controlled reconfigurable transistor

Abstract

Reconfigurable field effect transistors are an emerging class of electronic devices, which exploit a structure with multiple independent gates to selectively adjust the charge carrier transport. Here, we propose a new device variant, where not only p-type and n-type operation modes, but also an ambipolar mode can be selected solely by adjusting a single program voltage. It is demonstrated how the unique device reconfigurability of the new variant can be exploited for analog circuit design. The non-linearity of the ambipolar mode can be used for frequency doubling without the generation of additional harmonics. Further, phase shifter and follower circuits are enabled by the n- and p-type modes, respectively. All three functions can be combined to create a 3-to-1 reconfigurable analog signal modulation circuit on a single device enabling wireless communication schemes. Both, the concept as well as the application have been experimentally demonstrated on industrial-scale fully-depleted SOI platform. The special transport physics in those structures has been analyzed by TCAD simulations as well as temperature dependent measurements.

Reconfigurable signal modulation in a ferroelectric tunnel field-effect transistor

“…Thus, an amplitude of 0.3 V used for v in in this work allows the input signal operating in the range with the ideal case of a concave parabola as well as a nearly maximum conversion gain. These features verify and explain the fact that ferro-TFETs as frequency doublers produce highly pure output frequencies, particularly for weak signal processing in low-power systems, which has much smaller voltages than those used in ambipolar FETs 9 , 11 . This differs from ambipolar TFETs 22 , 23 which have exponential I D - V G dependence around the current valley in the subthreshold region.…”

“…However, these conventional devices usually produce undesired harmonics that need to be suppressed by complicated circuits or additional filters, thus dramatically increasing the device area and power consumption in the system. One potential solution to overcome this challenge is to use single transistors with symmetric transfer characteristic for frequency doubling 9 , 11 , 38 , 39 .…”

“…To obtain high conversion gain at desired frequency, power- and area-hungry filtering circuits are usually employed in conventional frequency doublers. In order to shrink area, there are many single-transistor frequency doublers 9 , 11 , 28 , 29 , 38 , 39 , 46 – 48 , but very few can operate with a V DD < 1 V while retaining a scaled footprint per device below 1 µm 2 , thereby being challenging for low-power systems and high-density integration with other technologies on the same platform. Area scaling also lowers the power consumption as it reduces the intrinsic capacitive contribution of the device.…”

“…The devices achieved ambipolar electrical transport by gate-induced drain leakage current and a reconfigurable V T shifted by the polarization in the ferroelectric gate. Additionally, a back-gate controlled reconfigurable Schottky FET has shown merged functionalities containing signal following, frequency doubling, and phase shifting 11 . Despite the reconfigurability achieved in these devices for analogue applications and full compatibility with Si complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the supply voltage ( V DD ) far above 1 V used to achieve the parabolic transfer characteristic raises the power consumption considerably, hence impeding their use in low-power communication systems such as IoT.…”

Insights into the Temperature‐Dependent Switching Behavior of Three‐Gated Reconfigurable Field‐Effect Transistors

“…In this case, which describes a state where the injected current is low (i.e., the Schottky barrier is thick), the activation energy tends to increase when V D is decreased. This phenomenon was already observed and described, [ 7,45,49 ] and implies that the activation energy of the system tends to the natural Schottky barrier height. In the case of the gate voltage dependence, shown in Figure 4d for two different drain voltages, it is possible to extract a trend showing that the p‐type side of the ambipolar behavior (where the dominant carriers are the holes) sees a higher barrier with respect to the n‐type branch.…”