Review on analog/radio frequency performance of advanced silicon MOSFETs

Abstract

Aggressive gate-length downscaling of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) has been the main stimulus for the growth of the integrated circuit industry. This downscaling, which has proved beneficial to digital circuits, is primarily the result of the need for improved circuit performance and cost reduction and has resulted in tremendous reduction of the carrier transit time across the channel, thereby resulting in very high cut-off frequencies. It is only in recent decades that complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) field-effect transistor (FET) has been considered as the radio frequency (RF) technology of choice. In this review, the status of the digital, analog and RF figures of merit (FoM) of silicon-based FETs is presented. State-of-the-art devices with very good performance showing low values of draininduced barrier lowering, sub-threshold swing, high values of gate transconductance, Early voltage, cut-off frequencies, and low minimum noise figure, and good low-frequency noise characteristic values are reported. The dependence of these FoM on the device gate length is also shown, helping the readers to understand the trends and challenges faced by shorter CMOS nodes. Device performance boosters including silicon-on-insulator substrates, multiple-gate architectures, strain engineering, ultra-thin body and buried-oxide and also III-V and 2D materials are discussed, highlighting the transistor characteristics that are influenced by these boosters. A brief comparison of the two main contenders in continuing Moore's law, ultra-thin body buried-oxide and fin field-effect transistors are also presented. The authors would like to mention that despite extensive research carried out in the semiconductor industry, silicon-based MOSFET will continue to be the driving force in the foreseeable future.Keywords: analog and radio-frequency figures of merit, digital figures of merit, multiple gate field effect transistor, ultra-thin body buried-oxide, III-V and two-dimensional channel field effect transistor

Device Design Guideline of 5-nm-Node FinFETs and Nanosheet FETs for Analog/RF Applications

“…Since DC parameters were well calibrated, G m R o of FinFETs and NSFETs were reasonable within the measured data [10], [11], [23]- [25]. F t and F max were slightly larger than the measured data [10], [11], [23]- [25] because the parasitic RC components of metal interconnects are not included in this TCAD work. But FinFETs and NSFETs would have the same metal-line configurations under the same CPP.…”

Unveiling the impact of the bias-dependent charge neutrality point on graphene based multi-transistor applications

“…ultra-high carrier mobility (2×10 5 cm 2 /Vs) and a high saturation velocity (~5.5×10 7 cm/s) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The field-effect transistor (FET) is an important component of any RF circuit embedded in the modern information and communication systems, and thus, improvements of its performance have a critical impact on this field [7][8][9]. Indeed, very auspicious RF graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) have already been demonstrated [10][11][12].…”

Analog/RF Performance Investigation of Dopingless FET for Ultra-Low Power Applications

“…Figure of Merits (FoMs) for analog performance of a DGFET can be described by: transconductance (g m = ∂I ds /∂V gs ), transconductance generation factor (g m /I ds ), intrinsic gain (A vo = g m /g ds ), and early voltage (V EA = I ds /g ds ) [33]. Since, g m influences the intrinsic voltage gain of a device, hence, considered as a key parameter for analog applications in the current study.…”

“…The f T is a frequency when the current gain is unity, whereas the f MAX is a frequency when power gain is unity. The NF min is evaluated by dividing the signal-to-noise ratio at the input port to that of the output port and is a measure of high-frequency noise [33], [37]- [39].…”