Design and Characterization of the Next Generation Nanowire Amplifiers

Abstract

Vertical nanowire surrounding gate field effect transistors (SGFETs) provide full gate control over the channel to eliminate shortchannel effects. This paper presents design and characterization of a differential pair amplifier using NMOS and PMOS SGFETs with a 10 nm channel length and a 2 nm channel radius. The amplifier dissipates 5 μW power and provides 5 THz bandwidth with a voltage gain of 16, a linear output voltage swing of 0.5 V, and a distortion better than 3% from a 1.8 V power supply and a 20 aF capacitive load. The 2nd-and 3rd-order harmonic distortions of the amplifier are −40 dBm and −52 dBm, respectively, and the 3rd-order intermodulation is −24 dBm for a two-tone input signal with 10 mV amplitude and 10 GHz frequency spacing. All these parameters indicate that vertical nanowire surrounding gate transistors are promising candidates for the next generation high-speed analog and VLSI technologies.