Sensitivity Assessment of Electrically Doped Cavity on Source Junctionless Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor-Based Biosensor

Abstract

The tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) has emerged as a promising device for biosensing applications due to band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) operation mechanism and a steep subthreshold swing. In this paper, an electrically doped cavity on source junctionless tunnel field-effect transistor (ED-CS-JLTFET)-based biosensor is proposed for label-free detection of biomolecules. In the proposed model, the electrically doped concept is enabled to reduce fabrication complexity and cost. In order to create a nano-cavity at the source region, some portion of the dielectric oxide of the polarity gate terminal is etched away. To perceive the presence of biomolecules, two important properties of biomolecules, such as dielectric constant and charge density, are incorporated throughout the simulation. The sensing performance of the proposed ED-CS-JLTFET-based biosensor has been analyzed in terms of transfer characteristics, threshold voltage and subthreshold swing. In addition, the sensitivity of the proposed biosensor has also been analyzed with respect to different fill factors (FFs), varying nano-cavity dimension and work-function of the control gate. It is found from the simulated results that the proposed ED-CS-JLTFET-based biosensor offers higher current sensitivities with neutral, positively charged and negatively charged biomolecules of [Formula: see text] (at k [Formula: see text]), [Formula: see text] (at [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] C[Formula: see text]cm[Formula: see text]) and [Formula: see text] (at k [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] C[Formula: see text]cm[Formula: see text]), respectively.