Abstract
Power consumption has become one of the bottlenecks limiting the future development of integrated circuits. Tunnel FETs (TFETs) and negative capacitance FETs (NCFETs) can break the subthreshold swing limitation (60 mV/dec at room temperature) of conventional metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) to reduce the operating voltage and thus power consumption. However, induced by the band-to-band tunneling mechanism, TFETs have a subthreshold swing degradation issue and relatively low ON current. Although NCFETs with ferroelectric/dielectric gate stack can theoretically maintain a high ON current comparable to conventional MOSFET, the physical origin of sub-60 SS is controversial and the mechanism of switching behavior in NCFET is still not clear. In this work, by experimentally investigating the whole negative differential capacitance process and its gate voltage amplification coefficient, an intrinsic issue of SS degradation with increased gate voltage is also found in NCFET for the first time. Based on the physical investigation and simulation results, it is shown that the intrinsic SS degradation in NCFET is resulting from the instant dielectric polarization response. Both the decrease of dielectric thickness and the increase of dielectric constant may lead to the severer SS degradation, which is not favorable for scaled NCFETs.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB2202800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61851401, 61822401, 61927901, 61421005), and 111 Project (Grant No. B18001).
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Yang, M., Huang, Q., Wang, K. et al. Physical investigation of subthreshold swing degradation behavior in negative capacitance FET. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 65, 162404 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-021-3283-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-021-3283-5