This expanded and thoroughly revised edition of Thomas H. Lee's acclaimed guide to the design of gigahertz RF integrated circuits features a completely new chapter on the principles of wireless systems. The chapters on low-noise amplifiers, oscillators and phase noise have been significantly expanded as well. The chapter on architectures now contains several examples of complete chip designs that bring together all the various theoretical and practical elements involved in producing a prototype chip. First Edition Hb (1998): 0-521-63061-4 First Edition Pb (1998); 0-521-63922-0

The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES

We report on negative capacitance FETs (NCFETs) with a 1.8-nm-thick Zr-doped HfO2 gate oxide layer fabricated on an FDSOI wafer. Hysteresis-free operation is demonstrated. When compared to a baseline that uses HfO2 gate oxide with the same thickness, a subthreshold swing (SS) steeper by more than 20 mV/decade and larger than 10X reduction in the OFF current ( ${I}_{ \mathrm{OFF}}$ ) is observed at 30-nm channel length at constant ${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}$ . On the other hand, at matched ${I} _{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}$ , the NCFET provides a larger ON current at constant ${V}_{\mathrm {DD}}$ . Our results indicate that the beneficial characteristic offered by the NCFETs can be obtained at scaled channel lengths, while using oxide layers whose thickness is comparable to the high- ${K}$ oxide layer used in ultra-scaled nodes.

Negative Capacitance FET With 1.8-nm-Thick Zr-Doped HfO 2 Oxide

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/aa67bf/pdf

The electronic band structure of Ge1−x Sn x in the full composition range: indirect, direct, and inverted gaps regimes, band offsets, and the Burstein–Moss effect

(Si)GeSn semiconductors are finally coming of age after a long gestation period. The demonstration of device-quality epi-layers and quantum-engineered heterostructures has meant that tunable all-group IV Si-integrated infrared photonics is now a real possibility. Notwithstanding the recent exciting developments in (Si)GeSn materials and devices, this family of semiconductors is still facing serious limitations that need to be addressed to enable reliable and scalable applications. The main outstanding challenges include the difficulty to grow high-crystalline quality layers and heterostructures at the desired content and lattice strain, preserve the material integrity during growth and throughout device processing steps, and control doping and defect density. Other challenges are related to the lack of optimized device designs and predictive theoretical models to evaluate and simulate the fundamental properties and performance of (Si)GeSn layers and heterostructures. This Perspective highlights key strategies to circumvent these hurdles and hopefully bring this material system to maturity to create far-reaching opportunities for Si-compatible infrared photodetectors, sensors, and emitters for applications in free-space communication, infrared harvesting, biological and chemical sensing, and thermal imaging.

Monolithic infrared silicon photonics: The rise of (Si)GeSn semiconductors

Negative capacitance in ferroelectric materials has been suggested as a solution to reduce the power dissipation of electronics beyond fundamental limits. The discovery of ferroelectricity and negative capacitance in the widely used class of HfO2-based materials has since sparked large research efforts to utilize these effects in ultra-low power transistors. While significant progress has been made in the basic understanding of ferroelectric negative capacitance in recent years, the development of practical devices has seen limited success so far. Here, we present a unique view of the field of negative capacitance electronics from the ferroelectric materials perspective. Starting from the basic principles of ferroelectric negative capacitance, we discuss the desirable characteristics of a negative capacitance material, concluding that HfO2-based ferroelectrics are currently most promising for applications in electronics. However, we emphasize that material non-idealities can complicate and in some cases even inhibit the design and fabrication of practical negative capacitance devices using HfO2-based ferroelectrics. Finally, we review the recent progress on experimental devices and give an outlook on the future direction of the field. In particular, further investigations of the microscopic structure of HfO2-based ferroelectrics are needed to provide an insight into the origin of negative capacitance in this material system and to enable predictive device design.

Progress and future prospects of negative capacitance electronics: A materials perspective

In negative capacitance field-effect transistors (NCFETs), drain current may decrease with increasing ${V}_{\mathrm {ds}}$ in the saturation region, leading to negative differential resistance (NDR). While NDR is useful for oscillator design, it is undesirable for most analog circuits. On the other hand, the tendency toward NDR may be used to reduce the normally positive output conductance ( ${g}_{ \mathrm {ds}}$ ) of a short-channel transistor to a nearly zero positive value to achieve higher voltage gain. In this paper, we analyze the NDR effect for NCFET in the static limit and demonstrate that it can be engineered to reduce ${g}_{\mathrm {ds}}$ degradation in short-channel devices. Small and positive $g_{\mathrm{ ds}}$ is achieved without compromising the subthreshold gain, which is crucial for analog applications. The 7-nm ITRS 2.0 FinFET with 0.7 V ${V}_{\mathrm {dd}}$ is used as the baseline device in this paper.

Engineering Negative Differential Resistance in NCFETs for Analog Applications

Negative-capacitance transistors use ferroelectric (FE) material in the gate-stack to improve the transistor performance. The extent of the improvement depends on the capacitance matching between the FE capacitance ( ${C}_{\textsf {fe}}$ ) and the underlying MOS transistor ( ${C}_{\textsf {MOS}}$ ). Since both ${C}_{\textsf {MOS}}$ and ${C}_{\textsf {fe}}$ have strong non-linearity, it is difficult to achieve a good matching for the entire operating gate voltage range. In this letter, we discuss a new approach using multi-layer FE to engineer the shape of ${C}_{\textsf {fe}}$ . The proposed method is validated using the TCAD simulation of negative-capacitance FDSOI transistor, and the results show that it leads to better sub-threshold swing as well as lower power supply ${V}_{\textsf {dd}}$ compared with a prototype single-layer negative-capacitance field-effect transistor.

Proposal for Capacitance Matching in Negative Capacitance Field-Effect Transistors

We propose a compact model for nanosheet FETs that take the effects of quantum confinement into account. The model captures the nanosheet width and thickness dependence of the electrostatic dimension, density of states, effective mass, subband energies, and threshold voltages and includes them in the charge calculation, resulting in an accurate terminal charge and current characteristics. The model has been implemented using Verilog-A in the BSIM-CMG framework for all simulations. It has been validated with band-structure calculation-based TCAD simulations as well as measured data. We have also highlighted the significance of quantum mechanical effects on analog and RF performance of the device.

BSIM Compact Model of Quantum Confinement in Advanced Nanosheet FETs

The spacer design of the negative-capacitance FinFET (NC-FinFET) is investigated by using Sentaurus technology computer-aided design (TCAD). The spacer affects not only the gate capacitance but also the drain current due to the additional gate control from the outer fringing field. It is found that in a heavily loaded circuit although the fin corner spacer improves the inverter propagation delay of the baseline FinFET, the NC-FinFET requires the fin selective spacer with the spacer height up to the ferroelectric thickness for better capacitance matching. When the wire capacitance is ~3 times larger than the gate capacitance, the inverter propagation delay of the NC-FinFET with the fin selective spacer can be improved by ~8% against the full spacer design. However, with the consideration of process complexity, the air spacer may still be attractive in the NC-FinFET, since it does not suffer from the amplified gate capacitance.

Spacer Engineering in Negative Capacitance FinFETs

We investigate the impact of inner fringing fields on the negative capacitance FinFET (NC-FinFET) and how this scales with the technology node. The 8-/7-nm technology node of the p-type body NC-FinFET is modeled using the Sentaurus technology-aided design (TCAD), which couples Poisson with Landau equations. It is found that the NC effect is beneficial for device scaling. The OFF current is well suppressed in short-channel devices (64.4% reduction at LG = 16 nm) because the inner fringing field induces negative gate charges and decreases the channel potential. For longer channel devices, the influence of inner fringing field disappears, and the depletion charges dominate the subthreshold characteristics. As reducing remnant polarization, the ON current is boosted (11.4% improvement at LG = 16 nm) for all lengths due to better matching between MOSFET and ferroelectric capacitances. In comparison with FinFET, the drain-induced barrier lowering of NC-FinFET is also well controlled (50% reduction at LG = 16 nm) due to the inner fringing field-induced gate charges, showing the scaling capability of NC-FinFET. Furthermore, a compact model to capture the spatial distribution of the inner fringing field is also proposed based on the Gaussian quadrature method, and it is validated with the TCAD simulated data with multiple gate lengths and remnant polarizations.

Ming-Yen Kao

Papers

Engineering Negative Differential Resistance in NCFETs for Analog Applications

Proposal for Capacitance Matching in Negative Capacitance Field-Effect Transistors

BSIM Compact Model of Quantum Confinement in Advanced Nanosheet FETs

Spacer Engineering in Negative Capacitance FinFETs

Analysis and Modeling of Inner Fringing Field Effect on Negative Capacitance FinFETs