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Title: Quantum mechanical solver for confined heterostructure tunnel field-effect transistors

Journal Article · · Journal of Applied Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4864128· OSTI ID:22278140
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  1. imec, Kapeldreef 75, 3001 Leuven (Belgium)
  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080 (United States)

Heterostructure tunnel field-effect transistors (HTFET) are promising candidates for low-power applications in future technology nodes, as they are predicted to offer high on-currents, combined with a sub-60 mV/dec subthreshold swing. However, the effects of important quantum mechanical phenomena like size confinement at the heterojunction are not well understood, due to the theoretical and computational difficulties in modeling realistic heterostructures. We therefore present a ballistic quantum transport formalism, combining a novel envelope function approach for semiconductor heterostructures with the multiband quantum transmitting boundary method, which we extend to 2D potentials. We demonstrate an implementation of a 2-band version of the formalism and apply it to study confinement in realistic heterostructure diodes and p-n-i-n HTFETs. For the diodes, both transmission probabilities and current densities are found to decrease with stronger confinement. For the p-n-i-n HTFETs, the improved gate control is found to counteract the deterioration due to confinement.

OSTI ID:
22278140
Journal Information:
Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 5; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English