Device-Circuit Analysis of Ferroelectric FETs for Low-Power Logic

Shreya Gupta, Mark Steiner, Ahmedullah Aziz, Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, Suman Datta, Sumeet Kumar Gupta

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

101 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ferroelectric FETs (FEFETs) are emerging devices with an immense potential to replace conventional MOSFETs by virtue of their steep switching characteristics. The ferroelectric (FE)material in the gate stack of the FEFET exhibits negative capacitance resulting in voltage step-up action which entails sub-60mV/decade subthreshold swing at room temperature. The thickness of the FE layer (TFE) is an important design parameter, governing the device-circuit operation. This paper extensivelyanalyzes the impact of TFE on the device-circuit characteristics in conjunction with the interactions between FE and gate/drain capacitances. While it is well known that increasing TFE yields higher gain albeit with the possibilities of introducing hysteresis, our analysis points to other unconventional effects emerging in circuits as TFE is increased. Depending on the attributes of the underlying transistor, increasing TFE beyond a certain value may lead to loss in saturation and/or negative differential resistance in the output characteristics. While the former effect results in the loss in gain of a logic gate, the lattermay yield hysteretic voltage transfer characteristics. We also discuss the effect of TFE on the circuit energy-delay. Our analysis shows that for high TFE, the delay of the circuit may increase with an increase in supply voltage. However, for voltages <0.25 V, FEFINFETs show an immense promise yielding 25% lower energy at iso-delay.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number7970179
Pages (from-to)3092-3100
Number of pages9
JournalIEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
Volume64
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2017

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Device-Circuit Analysis of Ferroelectric FETs for Low-Power Logic'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this