Silicon on ferroelectric insulator field effect transistor (SOF-FET) a new device for the next generation ultra low power circuits

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on March 12, 2014Thesis advisor: Masud H. ChowdhuryVitaIncludes bibliographical references (pages 116-131)Thesis (M. S.)--School of Computer and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2013Field effect transistors (FETs) are the foundation for all electronic circuits and processors. These devices have progressed massively to touch its final steps in subnanometer level. Left and right proposals are coming to rescue this progress. Emerging nano-electronic devices (resonant tunneling devices, single-atom transistors, spin devices, Heterojunction Transistors rapid flux quantum devices, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire devices) took a vast share of current scientific research. Non-Si electronic materials like III-V heterostructure, ferroelectric, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and other nanowire based designs are in developing stage to become the core technology of non-classical CMOS structures. FinFET present the current feasible commercial nanotechnology. The scalability and low power dissipation of this device allowed for an extension of silicon based devices. High short channel effect (SCE) immunity presents its major advantage. Multi-gate structure comes to light to improve the gate electrostatic over the channel. The new structure shows a higher performance that made it the first candidate to substitute the conventional MOSFET. The device also shows a future scalability to continue Moor’s Law. Furthermore, the device is compatible with silicon fabrication process. Moreover, the ultra-low-power (ULP) design required a subthreshold slope lower than the thermionic-emission limit of 60mV/ decade (KT/q). This value was unbreakable by the new structure (SOI-FinFET). On the other hand most of the previews proposals show the ability to go beyond this limit. However, those pre-mentioned schemes have publicized a very complicated physics, design difficulties, and process non-compatibility. The objective of this research is to discuss various emerging nano-devices proposed for ultra-low-power designs and their possibilities to replace the silicon devices as the core technology in the future integrated circuit. This thesis proposes a novel design that exploits the concept of negative capacitance. The new field effect transistor (FET) based on ferroelectric insulator named Silicon-On-Ferroelectric Insulator Field Effect Transistor (SOF-FET). This proposal is a promising methodology for future ultra-lowpower applications, because it demonstrates the ability to replace the silicon-bulk based MOSFET, and offers subthreshold swing significantly lower than 60mV/decade and reduced threshold voltage to form a conducting channel. The SOF-FET can also solve the issue of junction leakage (due to the presence of unipolar junction between the top plate of the negative capacitance and the diffused areas that form the transistor source and drain). In this device the charge hungry ferroelectric film already limits the leakage.Abstract -- List of illustrations - List of tables -- Acknowledgements -- Dedication -- Introduction -- Carbon nanotube field effect transistor -- Multi-gate transistors -FinFET -- Subthreshold swing -- Tunneling field effect transistors -- I-mos and nanowire fets -- Ferroelectric based field effect transistors -- An analytical model to approximate the subthreshold swing for soi-finfet -- Silicon-on-ferroelectric insulator field effect transistor (SOF-FET) -- Current-voltage characteristics of sof-fet -- Advantages, manufacturing process and future work of the proposed device -- Appendix -- Reference

Quantum and spin-based tunneling devices for memory systems

Rapid developments in information technology, such as internet, portable computing, and wireless communication, create a huge demand for fast and reliable ways to store and process information. Thus far, this need has been paralleled with the revolution in solid-state memory technologies. Memory devices, such as SRAM, DRAM, and flash, have been widely used in most electronic products. The primary strategy to keep up the trend is miniaturization. CMOS devices have been scaled down beyond sub-45 nm, the size of only a few atomic layers. Scaling, however, will soon reach the physical limitation of the material and cease to yield the desired enhancement in device performance. In this thesis, an alternative method to scaling is proposed and successfully realized. The proposed scheme integrates quantum devices, Si/SiGe resonant interband tunnel diodes (RITD), with classical CMOS devices forming a microsystem of disparate devices to achieve higher performance as well as higher density. The device/circuit designs, layouts and masks involving 12 levels were fabricated utilizing a process that incorporates nearly a hundred processing steps. Utilizing unique characteristics of each component, a low-power tunneling-based static random access memory (TSRAM) has been demonstrated. The TSRAM cells exhibit bistability operation with a power supply voltage as low as 0.37 V. Various TSRAM cells were also constructed and their latching mechanisms have been extensively investigated. In addition, the operation margins of TSRAM cells are evaluated based on different device structures and temperature variation from room temperature up to 200oC. The versatility of TSRAM is extended beyond the binary system. Using multi-peak Si/SiGe RITD, various multi-valued TSRAM (MV-TSRAM) configurations that can store more than two logic levels per cell are demonstrated. By this virtue, memory density can be substantially increased. Using two novel methods via ambipolar operation and utilization of enable/disable transistors, a six-valued MV-TSRAM cell are demonstrated. A revolutionary novel concept of integrating of Si/SiGe RITD with spin tunnel devices, magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ), has been developed. This hybrid approach adds non-volatility and multi-valued memory potential as demonstrated by theoretical predictions and simulations. The challenges of physically fabricating these devices have been identified. These include process compatibility and device design. A test bed approach of fabricating RITD-MTJ structures has been developed. In conclusion, this body of work has created a sound foundation for new research frontiers in four different major areas: integrated TSRAM system, MV-TSRAM system, MTJ/RITD-based nonvolatile MRAM, and RITD/CMOS logic circuits

Digital and analog TFET circuits: Design and benchmark

In this work, we investigate by means of simulations the performance of basic digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuits employing tunnel-FETs (TFETs). The analysis reviews and complements our previous papers on these topics. By considering the same devices for all the analysis, we are able to draw consistent conclusions for a wide variety of circuits. A virtual complementary TFET technology consisting of III-V heterojunction nanowires is considered. Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) models are calibrated against the results of advanced full-quantum simulation tools and then used to generate look-up-tables suited for circuit simulations. The virtual complementary TFET technology is benchmarked against predictive technology models (PTM) of complementary silicon FinFETs for the 10 nm node over a wide range of supply voltages (VDD) in the sub-threshold voltage domain considering the same footprint between the vertical TFETs and the lateral FinFETs and the same static power. In spite of the asymmetry between p- and n-type transistors, the results show clear advantages of TFET technology over FinFET for VDDlower than 0.4 V. Moreover, we highlight how differences in the I-V characteristics of FinFETs and TFETs suggest to adapt the circuit topologies used to implement basic digital and analog blocks with respect to the most common CMOS solutions

Enhanced Hardware Security Using Charge-Based Emerging Device Technology

The emergence of hardware Trojans has largely reshaped the traditional view that the hardware layer can be blindly trusted. Hardware Trojans, which are often in the form of maliciously inserted circuitry, may impact the original design by data leakage or circuit malfunction. Hardware counterfeiting and IP piracy are another two serious issues costing the US economy more than $200 billion annually. A large amount of research and experimentation has been carried out on the design of these primitives based on the currently prevailing CMOS technology. However, the security provided by these primitives comes at the cost of large overheads mostly in terms of area and power consumption. The development of emerging technologies provides hardware security researchers with opportunities to utilize some of the otherwise unusable properties of emerging technologies in security applications. In this dissertation, we will include the security consideration in the overall performance measurements to fully compare the emerging devices with CMOS technology. The first approach is to leverage two emerging devices (Silicon NanoWire and Graphene SymFET) for hardware security applications. Experimental results indicate that emerging device based solutions can provide high level circuit protection with relatively lower performance overhead compared to conventional CMOS counterpart. The second topic is to construct an energy-efficient DPA-resilient block cipher with ultra low-power Tunnel FET. Current-mode logic is adopted as a circuit-level solution to countermeasure differential power analysis attack, which is mostly used in the cryptographic system. The third investigation targets on potential security vulnerability of foundry insider\u27s attack. Split manufacturing is adopted for the protection on radio-frequency (RF) circuit design

Sub-10nm Transistors for Low Power Computing: Tunnel FETs and Negative Capacitance FETs

One of the major roadblocks in the continued scaling of standard CMOS technology is its alarmingly high leakage power consumption. Although circuit and system level methods can be employed to reduce power, the fundamental limit in the overall energy efficiency of a system is still rooted in the MOSFET operating principle: an injection of thermally distributed carriers, which does not allow subthreshold swing (SS) lower than 60mV/dec at room temperature. Recently, a new class of steep-slope devices like Tunnel FETs (TFETs) and Negative-Capacitance FETs (NCFETs) have garnered intense interest due to their ability to surpass the 60mV/dec limit on SS at room temperature. The focus of this research is on the simulation and design of TFETs and NCFETs for ultra-low power logic and memory applications. Using full band quantum mechanical model within the Non-Equilibrium Greens Function (NEGF) formalism, source-underlapping has been proposed as an effective technique to lower the SS in GaSb-InAs TFETs. Band-tail states, associated with heavy source doping, are shown to significantly degrade the SS in TFETs from their ideal value. To solve this problem, undoped source GaSb-InAs TFET in an i-i-n configuration is proposed. A detailed circuit-to-system level evaluation is performed to investigate the circuit level metrics of the proposed devices. To demonstrate their potential in a memory application, a 4T gain cell (GC) is proposed, which utilizes the low-leakage and enhanced drain capacitance of TFETs to realize a robust and long retention time GC embedded-DRAMs. The device/circuit/system level evaluation of proposed TFETs demonstrates their potential for low power digital applications. The second part of the thesis focuses on the design space exploration of hysteresis-free Negative Capacitance FETs (NCFETs). A cross-architecture analysis using HfZrOx ferroelectric (FE-HZO) integrated on bulk MOSFET, fully-depleted SOI-FETs, and sub-10nm FinFETs shows that FDSOI and FinFET configurations greatly benefit the NCFET performance due to their undoped body and improved gate-control which enables better capacitance matching with the ferroelectric. A low voltage NC-FinFET operating down to 0.25V is predicted using ultra-thin 3nm FE-HZO. Next, we propose one-transistor ferroelectric NOR type (Fe-NOR) non-volatile memory based on HfZrOx ferroelectric FETs (FeFETs). The enhanced drain-channel coupling in ultrashort channel FeFETs is utilized to dynamically modulate memory window of storage cells thereby resulting in simple erase-, program-and read-operations. The simulation analysis predicts sub-1V program/erase voltages in the proposed Fe-NOR memory array and therefore presents a significantly lower power alternative to conventional FeRAM and NOR flash memories

Digital and analog TFET circuits: Design and benchmark

In this work, we investigate by means of simulations the performance of basic digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuits employing tunnel-FETs (TFETs). The analysis reviews and complements our previous papers on these topics. By considering the same devices for all the analysis, we are able to draw consistent conclusions for a wide variety of circuits. A virtual complementary TFET technology consisting of III-V heterojunction nanowires is considered. Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) models are calibrated against the results of advanced full-quantum simulation tools and then used to generate look-up-tables suited for circuit simulations. The virtual complementary TFET technology is benchmarked against predictive technology models (PTM) of complementary silicon FinFETs for the 10 nm node over a wide range of supply voltages (VDD) in the sub-threshold voltage domain considering the same footprint between the vertical TFETs and the lateral FinFETs and the same static power. In spite of the asymmetry between p- and n-type transistors, the results show clear advantages of TFET technology over FinFET for VDDlower than 0.4 V. Moreover, we highlight how differences in the I-V characteristics of FinFETs and TFETs suggest to adapt the circuit topologies used to implement basic digital and analog blocks with respect to the most common CMOS solutions

Low-Power Heterogeneous Graphene Nanoribbon-CMOS Multistate Volatile Memory Circuit

Graphene is an emerging nanomaterial believed to be a potential candidate for post-Si nanoelectronics, due to its exotic properties. Recently, a new graphene nanoribbon crossbar (xGNR) device was proposed which exhibits negative differential resistance (NDR). In this paper, a multi-state memory design is presented that can store multiple bits in a single cell enabled by this xGNR device, called Graphene Nanoribbon Tunneling Random Access Memory (GNTRAM). An approach to increase the number of bits per cell is explored alternative to physical scaling to overcome CMOS SRAM limitations. A comprehensive design for quaternary GNTRAM is presented as a baseline, implemented with a heterogeneous integration between graphene and CMOS. Sources of leakage and approaches to mitigate them are investigated. This design is extensively benchmarked against 16nm CMOS SRAMs and 3T DRAM. The proposed quaternary cell shows up to 2.27x density benefit vs. 16nm CMOS SRAMs and 1.8x vs. 3T DRAM. It has comparable read performance and is power-efficient, up to 1.32x during active period and 818x during stand-by against high performance SRAMs. Multi-state GNTRAM has the potential to realize high-density low-power nanoscale embedded memories. Further improvements may be possible by using graphene more extensively, as graphene transistors become available in future

높은 전류 구동능력을 가지는 SiGe 나노시트 구조의 터널링 전계효과 트랜지스터

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2021. 2. 박병국.The development of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) technology has continuously demanded smaller devices to achieve high integration density for faster computing speed or higher capacity. However, in the recent complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, simple downsizing the dimension of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) no longer guarantees the boosting performance of IC chips. In particular, static power consumption is not reduced while device size is decreasing because voltage scaling is slowed down at some point. The increased off-current due to short-channel effect (SCE) of MOSFET is a representative cause of the difficulty in voltage scaling. To overcome these fundamental limits of MOSFET, many researchers have been looking for the next generation of FET device over the last ten years. Tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) has been intensively studied for its steep switching characteristics. Nevertheless, the poor current drivability of TFET is the most serious obstacle to become competitive device for MOSFET. In this thesis, TFET with high current drivability in which above-mentioned problem is significantly solved is proposed. Vertically-stacked SiGe nanosheet channels are used to boost carrier injection and gate control. The fabrication technique to form highly-condensed SiGe nanosheets is introduced. TFET is fabricated with MOSFET with the same structure in the CMOS-compatible process. Both technology-computer-aided-design (TCAD) simulation and experimental results are utilized to support and examine the advantages of proposed TFET. From the perspective of the single device, the improvement in switching characteristics and current drivability are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. In addition, the device performance is compared to the benchmark of previously reported TFET and co-fabricated MOSFET. Through those processes, the feasibility of SiGe nanosheet TFET is verified. It is revealed that the proposed SiGe nanosheet TFET has notable steeper switching and low leakage in the low drive voltage as an alternative to conventional MOSFET.초고밀도 집적회로 기술의 발전은 고집적도 달성을 통해 단위 칩의 연산 속도 및 용량 향상에 기여할 소형의 소자를 끊임없이 요구하고 있다. 하지만 최신의 상보형 금속-산화막-반도체 (CMOS) 기술에서 금속-산화막-반도체 전계 효과 트랜지스터 (MOSFET) 의 단순한 소형화는 더 이상 집적회로의 성능 향상을 보장해 주지 못하고 있다. 특히 소자의 크기가 줄어드는 반면 정적 전력 소모량은 전압 스케일링의 둔화로 인해 감소되지 않고 있는 상황이다. MOSFET의 짧은 채널 효과로 인해 증가된 누설 전류가 전압 스케일링의 어려움을 주는 대표적 원인으로 꼽힌다. 이러한 근본적인 MOSFET의 한계를 극복하기 위하여 지난 10여년간 새로운 단계의 전계 효과 트랜지스터 소자들이 연구되고 있다. 그 중 터널 전계 효과 트랜지스터(TFET)은 그 특유의 우수한 전원 특성으로 각광받아 집중적으로 연구되고 있다. 많은 연구에도 불구하고, TFET의 부족한 전류 구동 능력은 MOSFET의 대체재로 자리매김하는 데 가장 큰 문제점이 되고 있다. 본 학위논문에서는 상기된 문제점을 해결할 수 있는 우수한 전류 구동 능력을 가진 TFET이 제안되었다. 반송자 유입과 게이트 컨트롤을 향상시킬 수 있는 수직 적층된 실리콘저마늄(SiGe) 나노시트 채널이 사용되었다. 또한, 제안된 TFET은 CMOS 기반 공정을 활용하여 MOSFET과 함께 제작되었다. 테크놀로지 컴퓨터 지원 설계(TCAD) 시뮬레이션과 실제 측정 결과를 활용하여 제안된 소자의 우수성을 검증하였다. 단위 CMOS 소자의 관점에서, 전원 특성과 전류 구동 능력의 향상을 정량적, 정성적 방법으로 분석하였다. 그리고, 제작된 소자의 성능을 기존 제작 및 보고된 TFET 및 함께 제작된 MOSSFET과 비교하였다. 이러한 과정을 통해, 실리콘저마늄 나노시트 TFET의 활용 가능성이 입증되었다. 제안된 실리콘저마늄 나노시트 소자는 주목할 만한 전원 특성을 가졌고 저전압 구동 환경에서 한층 더 낮은 누설 전류를 가짐으로써 향후 MOSFET을 대체할만한 충분한 가능성을 보여주었다.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1. Power Crisis of Conventional CMOS Technology 1 1.2. Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor (TFET) 6 1.3. Feasibility and Challenges of TFET 9 1.4. Scope of Thesis 11 Chapter 2 Device Characterization 13 2.1. SiGe Nanosheet TFET 13 2.2. Device Concept 15 2.3. Calibration Procedure for TCAD simulation 17 2.4. Device Verification with TCAD simulation 21 Chapter 3 Device Fabrication 31 3.1. Fabrication Process Flow 31 3.2. Key Processes for SiGe Nanosheet TFET 33 3.2.1. Key Process 1 : SiGe Nanosheet Formation 34 3.2.2. Key Process 2 : Source/Drain Implantation 41 3.2.3. Key Process 3 : High-κ/Metal gate Formation 43 Chapter 4 Results and Discussion 53 4.1. Measurement Results 53 4.2. Analysis of Device Characteristics 56 4.2.1. Improved Factors to Performance in SiGe Nanosheet TFET 56 4.2.2. Performance Comparison with SiGe Nanosheet MOSFET 62 4.3. Performance Evaluation through Benchmarks 64 4.4. Optimization Plan for SiGe nanosheet TFET 66 4.4.1. Improvement of Quality of Gate Dielectric 66 4.4.2. Optimization of Doping Junction at Source 67 Chapter 5 Conclusion 71 Bibliography 73 Abstract in Korean 81 List of Publications 83Docto

Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing Negative Differential Resistance Mode Reconfigurable Field Effect Transistors

Desirably, the world relies on the devices being compact, as they could drive to the increased functionality of integrated circuits at the provided footstep, that is becoming more reliable. To reduce the scalability over the devices, approach has been outlined utilizing the NDR mode reconfigurable functionality over the transistors. Being an individual device efficient in exhibiting different task with the different configurations in the same physical circuitry. On the view of reconfigurable transistors, possibly authorize the reconfiguration from a p-type to n-type channel transistor has been expelled as an emerging application such as static memory cells, fast switching logic circuits as well as energy efficient computational multi valued logic. This article emphasizes NDR mode RFET along with its classification, followed by enhancing the RFET technology concepts and RFETs future potential has been discussed briefing with the growing applications like hardware security as well as neuro-inspired computing.Comment: 28 pages, 9 figure