RF Performance of Stacked Si Nanosheet nFETs
Hsin-Cheng Lin, Tao Chou, Chia-Che Chung, Chia-Jung Tsen, Bo‐Wei Huang, C. W. Liu
Abstract
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 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.1\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> cut-off frequency (240 versus 215 GHz) and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.15\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 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 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I} _{D}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> – <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text {GS}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> fitting, the cut-off frequency and maximum oscillation frequency of stacked Si NSs can reach 380 and 390 GHz, respectively.