Transport enhancement techniques for nanoscale MOSFETs

Over the past two decades, intrinsic MOSFET delay has been scaled commensurate with the scaling of the dimensions. To extend this historical trend in the future, careful analysis of what determines the transistor performance is required. In this work, a new delay metric is first introduced that better captures the interplay of the main technology parameters, and employed to study the historical trends of the performance scaling and to quantify the requirements for the continuous increase of the performance in the future. It is shown that the carrier velocity in the channel has been the main driver for the improved transistor performance with scaling. A roadmapping exercise is presented and it is shown that new channel materials are needed to lever carrier velocity beyond what is achieved with uniaxially strained silicon, along with dramatic reduction in the device parasitics. Such innovations are needed as early as the 32-nm node to avoid the otherwise counter-scaling of the performance. The prospects and limitations of various approaches that are being pursued to increase the carrier velocity and thereby the transistor performance are then explored. After introducing the basics of the transport in nanoscale MOSFETs, the impact of channel material and strain configuration on electron and hole transport are examined. Uniaixal tensile strain in silicon is shown to be very promising to enhance electron transport as long as higher strain levels can be exerted on the device. Calculations and analysis in this work demonstrate that in uniaxially strained silicon, virtual source velocity depends more strongly on the mobility than previously believed and the modulation of the effective mass under uniaxial strain is responsible for this string dependence.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Khakifirooz, Ali

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dimitri A. Antoniadis.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42907

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42907