RF Performance of Stacked Si Nanosheet nFETs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices 2021-10, Vol.68 (10), p.5277-5283
• Main Authors: Lin, Hsin-Cheng, Chou, Tao, Chung, Chia-Che, Tsen, Chia-Jung, Huang, Bo-Wei, Liu, C. W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arrays; cut-off frequency; Cutoff frequency; Electron mobility; FinFETs; gate-all-around; Layout; Logic gates; maximum oscillation frequency; mm-wave; Nanosheets; Peak to average power ratio; Radio frequency; Semiconductor devices; Silicon; stacked nanosheets (NSs); Transconductance; Transistors
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2021.3106287

Stacked nanosheet nFETs considering a six-stack four-finger transistor array are studied and optimized by validated TCAD simulation. Stacked Si nanosheet (NS) nFETs have lower parasitics than nFinFETs in the same six-fin/stack four-finger transistor array layout. With the same electron mobility, back-end-of-line (BEOL), equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) of 1.4 nm, and gate length of 30 nm, the stacked Si NSs have 1.1\times cut-off frequency (240 versus 215 GHz) and 1.15\times maximum oscillation frequency (290 versus 251 GHz) when compared to FinFETs due to larger transconductance increase than capacitance increase and output conductance decrease. With the optimized EOT of 0.8 nm and gate length of 18 nm, the stacked Si NSs can achieve cut-off frequency of 340 GHz and maximum oscillation frequency of 370 GHz. Furthermore, considering the higher electron mobility on {100} surfaces of NSs than {110} sidewalls of FinFETs as suggested by the {I} _{D} - {V}_{\text {GS}} fitting, the cut-off frequency and maximum oscillation frequency of stacked Si NSs can reach 380 and 390 GHz, respectively.