Assessing RF/AC Performance and Linearity Analysis of NCFET in CMOS-Compatible Thin-Body FDSOI
Siddhanta Roy, Pralay Chakrabarty, Roy Paily
Abstract
The ever-growing exploration of negative capacitance field effect transistors (NCFETs) for low-power digital application and recent integration in the advanced technology node calls for an investigation of NCFET technology in radio-frequency (RF) applications featuring metal ferroelectric insulator semiconductor (MFIS) configuration. In this article, through TCAD simulation study, we investigate the RF/ac performance of NCFETs by well-known performance metrics such as short-circuit unity current gain frequency or cutoff frequency <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${f}_{T} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> , transconductance generation factor <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m}/{I}_{d}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , and transconductance frequency product <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m} {f}_{T}/{I}_{d}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , a measure of RF performance per dc power consumption, where <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <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> are transconductance and drive current, respectively. It is found that MFIS NCFET fares better when compared to the 14-nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) field effect transistor (FET) as a baseline device, in terms of improved performance in <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m}/{I}_{d}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m} {f}_{T}/{I}_{d}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . A performance parity in cutoff frequency <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${f}_{T}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is observed. Additionally, the intermodulation distortion <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {IMD}_{{3}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and transistor-level linearity are studied. When a qualitative analysis of the behavior of the key linearity metrics such as higher-order harmonics ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${g}_{m{2}}, {g}_{m{3}} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), second- and third-order voltage intercept points ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {VIP}_{{2}}, \text {VIP}_{{3}} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), third-order power-intercept point ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {IIP}_{{3}} $ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) is carried out, NCFETs fared comparatively better in linearity. Our conclusions would provide a better insight into adopting NCFET technology for RF applications.