Systematic Evaluation of the effect of Temperature Sensitivity and Channel Length Scaling on Electrical Performance of Nanowire Transistors

Abstract

This paper presents a comparison of the electrical performance and temperature sensitivity of Silicon Nanowire Field-effect Transistors (Si-NWFETs), Germanium Nanowire Field-effect Transistors (Ge-NWFETs), and Gallium Arsenide Nanowire Field-effect Transistors (GaAs-NWFETs) when the channel length is scaled down. To analyze the electrical behavior of the devices, the MuGFET simulator was used during the simulations and the devices were simulated at various channel lengths: 25 nm, 45 nm, 65 nm, 85 nm, and 105 nm and temperature range 250 K–450 K. The electrical properties investigated include drain current (I_D), drain induced barrier lowering (DIBL) sub threshold-swing (SS), and threshold voltage (V_TH). The results show that in terms of the electrical characteristics, GaAs-NWFET exhibits the lowest DIBL value of 16.68mV/V at the channel length of 105 nm, threshold voltage of 0.32 V at channel length of 25 nm; making it a nanodevice with minimized short channel effects among the three investigated devices. For temperature sensitivity, the GaAs-NWFET exhibits the overall highest drain current of 1.70 × 10^-3A/µm at 450 K and the channel length of 85 nm; making it the best temperature nanosensor among the three investigated nanowire transistors. The finding suggests the consideration of channel material selection and channel length optimization for designing temperature-sensitive nanodevices with reduced short channel effects.