This paper presents Si/SiGe:C and InP/GaAsSb HBTs which feature specific assets to address submillimeter-wave and THz applications. Process and modeling status and challenges are reviewed. The ...specific topics of thermal and substrate effects, reliability, and HF measurements are also discussed.
In this paper, a new deterministic approach to electron noise based on a spherical harmonics expansion (SHE) of the Langevin-Boltzmann equation in the frequency domain is presented for silicon ...devices. Compared to the standard Monte Carlo (MC) approach, the SHE method has many advantages. It can handle the full frequency range from zero to terahertz, low current levels, and slow processes, and it gives more insight into the physics of noise. This is demonstrated for RF noise in a nanoscale silicon N + NN + structure and an n-p-n bipolar junction transistor, for which not only the terminal-current fluctuations are investigated but also the spatial origin of the noise, which is not possible by MC simulation. With respect to numerics, the new approach is similar to classical device simulation (e.g., drift-diffusion model), and the same well-known methods can be used (e.g., adjoint method, ac analysis, harmonic-balance technique, linear solvers, maximum entropy dissipation stabilization, box integration, etc.)
The hole inversion-layer mobility of strained-SiGe homo- and heterostructure-on-insulator in ultrathin-body MOSFETs is modeled by a microscopic approach. The subband structure of the quasi-2-D hole ...gas is calculated by solving the 6times6koarrldrpoarr Schrodinger equation self-consistently with the electrostatic potential. The model includes four important scattering mechanisms: optical phonon scattering, acoustic phonon scattering, alloy scattering, and surface-roughness scattering. The model parameters are calibrated by matching the measured low-field mobility of two particularly selected long-channel pMOSFET cases. The calibrated model reproduces available channel-mobility measurements for many different strained-SiGe-on-insulator structures. For the silicon-on-insulator MOS structures with unstrained-Si channels, the silicon-thickness dependence resulting from our model for the low-field channel mobility agrees with previous publications.
Large band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) leakage currents can ultimately limit the scalability of high-mobility (small-bandgap) materials. This paper presents a novel heterostructure double-gate FET ...(DGFET) that can significantly reduce BTBT leakage currents while retaining its high mobility, making it suitable for scaling into the sub-20-nm regime. In particular, through one-dimensional Poisson-Schrodinger, full-band Monte Carlo, and detailed BTBT simulations, the tradeoffs between carrier transport, electrostatics, and BTBT leakage in high-mobility sub-20-nm Si-strained SiGe-Si (high germanium concentration) heterostructure PMOS DGFETs are thoroughly analyzed. The results show a dramatic (>100/spl times/) reduction in BTBT and an excellent electrostatic control of the channel while maintaining very high drive currents and switching frequencies in these nanoscale transistors.
The Boltzmann transport equation is commonly considered to be the best semi-classical description of carrier transport in semiconductors, providing precise information about the distribution of ...carriers with respect to time (one dimension), location (three dimensions), and momentum (three dimensions). However, numerical solutions for the seven-dimensional carrier distribution functions are very demanding. The most common solution approach is the stochastic Monte Carlo method, because the gigabytes of memory requirements of deterministic direct solution approaches has not been available until recently. As a remedy, the higher accuracy provided by solutions of the Boltzmann transport equation is often exchanged for lower computational expense by using simpler models based on macroscopic quantities such as carrier density and mean carrier velocity. Recent developments for the deterministic spherical harmonics expansion method have reduced the computational cost for solving the Boltzmann transport equation, enabling the computation of carrier distribution functions even for spatially three-dimensional device simulations within minutes to hours. We summarize recent progress for the spherical harmonics expansion method and show that small currents, reasonable execution times, and rare events such as low-frequency noise, which are all hard or even impossible to simulate with the established Monte Carlo method, can be handled in a straight-forward manner. The applicability of the method for important practical applications is demonstrated for noise simulation, small-signal analysis, hot-carrier degradation, and avalanche breakdown.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Part I of this paper dealt with the fundamental understanding of device physics and circuit design in a novel transistor, based on the field-effect control of impact-ionization (I-MOS). This paper ...focuses on experimental results obtained on various silicon-based prototypes of the I-MOS. The fabricated p-channel I-MOS devices showed extremely abrupt transitions from the OFF state to the ON state with a subthreshold slope of less than 10 mV/dec at 300 K. These first experimental prototypes of the I-MOS also showed significant hot carrier effects resulting in threshold voltage shifts and degradation of subthreshold slope with repeated measurements. Hot carrier damage was seen to be much worse in nMOS devices than in pMOS devices. Monte Carlo simulations revealed that the hot carrier damage was caused by holes (electrons) underneath the gate in pMOS (nMOS) devices and, thus, consequently explained the difference in hot carrier effects in p-channel versus n-channel I-MOS transistors. Recessed channel devices were also explored to understand the effects of surfaces on the enhancement in the breakdown voltage in I-MOS devices. In order to reduce the breakdown voltage needed for device operation, simple p-i-n devices were fabricated in germanium. These devices showed much lower values of breakdown voltage and excellent matches to MEDICI simulations.
We refine our approach for hot-carrier degradation modeling based on a thorough evaluation of the carrier energy distribution by means of a full-band Monte–Carlo simulator. The model is extended to ...describe the linear current degradation over a wide range of operation conditions. For this purpose we employ two types of interface states, either created by single- or by multiple-electron processes. These traps apparently have different densities of states which is important to consider when calculating the charges stored in these traps. By calibrating the model to represent the degradation of the transfer characteristics, we extract the number of particles trapped by both types of interface traps. We find that traps created by the single- and multiple-electron mechanisms are differently distributed over energy with the latter shifted toward higher energies. This concept allows for an accurate representation of the degradation of the transistor transfer characteristics.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
It is shown that the conductance in nanoscale devices near equilibrium strongly depends on the choice of the transport model. Errors larger than a factor of two can be encountered, if the ...drift-diffusion (DD) model is used instead of a model based on the full Boltzmann equation. This effect is due to a fundamental difference in carrier heating between bulk systems and devices. Although carrier heating is included in hydrodynamic models, this effect is captured only partially by these models due to the model inherent approximations. A direct consequence of the failure of the DD approximation is that the usual method for inversion layer mobility extraction from measurements in the linear regime becomes inaccurate for short gate lengths and the extracted mobilities might be too small. This error has also an impact on the modeling accuracy at strong nonequilibrium. In the case of the DD model, the overestimation of the conductivity in the linear regime can partly compensate the underestimation of the current at high bias, and the model accidentally appears to be more accurate than expected.
The hole inversion layer mobility of in-plane uniaxially stressed Si is modeled by a microscopic approach. For an arbitrary crystallographic surface orientation the two dimensional hole gas subband ...structure is calculated by solving the 6×6 k→·p→ Schrödinger equation self-consistently with the electrostatic potential. Three important scattering mechanisms are included: optical phonon scattering, acoustic phonon scattering and surface roughness scattering. The model parameters are calibrated by matching the measured low-field mobility of relaxed Si on (001) Si wafers. The calibrated model reproduces available channel mobility measurements for unstrained and uniaxially stressed Si on (001), (111) and (110) substrates.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
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