Schenk A., Wettstein A.
Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technology, CH
Keywords: decananometer MOSFETs, deep sub-micron devices, density gradient method, source-to-drain tunneling, TCAD
The density gradient method is able to reproduce the quantum-mechanical charge density in CMOS devices. Its ability to describe gate tunneling currents is still a matter of dispute. This paper presents the first 2-dimensional application of the density gradient model to decananometer MOSFETs. By shrinking the effective channel length to zero it is found that the degradation of the sub-threshold swing due to source-to-drain tunneling is weak and nearly independent of the channel length. It is shown that the presence of the abrupt oxide potential barrier pins the height of the source-drain barrier and limits tunneling of the confined electrons in the channel. As a result, thermionic emission determines the off-state current at 300 K even for vanishing channel length. It is concluded that 1D calculations of source-to-drain tunneling are inadequate, since they neglect the dominant influence of the Si-SiO2 potential barrier on the transport in channel direction.
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 1, Technical Proceedings of the 2002 International Conference on Modeling and Simulation of Microsystems
Published: April 22, 2002
Pages: 552 - 555
Industry sector: Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: Modeling & Simulation of Microsystems
ISBN: 0-9708275-7-1