Endurance Characteristics of Negative Capacitance FinFETs With Negligible Hysteresis

• Published in: IEEE electron device letters 2021-02, Vol.42 (2), p.260-263
• Main Authors: Cai, Yuwei, Zhang, Qinzhu, Zhang, Zhaohao, Xu, Gaobo, Luo, Yanna, Gu, Jie, Gan, Weizhuo, Lin, Xiang, Xu, Renren, Wu, Zhenhua, Yin, Huaxiang, Wang, Wenwu, Xu, Qiuxia, Ye, Tianchun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Capacitance; Circuit design; Durability; Endurance; Fatigue; Ferroelectricity; Field effect transistors; FinFET; FinFETs; Hf0.5Zr0.5O; Hysteresis; Logic gates; Model matching; Negative capacitance (NC); Semiconductor devices; subthreshold swing (SS); Switches; Switching; Threshold voltage
• ISSN: 0741-3106; 1558-0563
• DOI: 10.1109/LED.2020.3048349

In this letter, the endurance characteristics of negative capacitance (NC) FinFETs with an ultra-steep subthreshold swing (SS) and negligible hysteresis were investigated by an examination approach to emulate long-term logic operation. Detailed variation characteristics for different electrical parameters are summarized for devices subjected to up to 10 10 switching pulse cycles. The average values of the threshold voltages ( {V}_{t}\text{s} ) and hysteresis of the NC-FinFETs exhibited a clear initial increase followed by a decrease as the number of switching cycles was increased; however, the variation of the SS had a different behavior. This result could be attributed to capacitance mismatching in the NC devices induced by a capacitance change of the ferroelectric film. These findings provide an effective method for confirming the capacitance matching model and also offer a guide for design of NC-FET devices and their implementation in future real circuit applications.