A comparative performance analysis of 10 nm Si nanowire and carbon nanotube field effect transistors

Abstract

Both Carbon Nanotube and Silicon Nanowire are emerging as promising materials for the development of next generation electronic devices. Our focus is mainly on the comparative study of Silicon Nanowire Field Effect Transistor (SiNW-FET) and Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor (CNT-FET). In this work, we have simulated an n-type single walled CNT-FET and a SiNW-FET. A brief comparison between the transconductances of both types of devices due to the applied strain has been studied where SiNW-FET shows incremental change in transconductance which happens to decrease for CNT-FET for lower input voltage range. Afterwards, we have observed the velocity vs applied electric field curves for both CNT-FET and SiNW-FET. It has been shown that although SiNW-FET has lower saturation velocity than CNT-FET, it can be improved by applying tensile strain. Finally, the direct tunneling gate leakage currents for CNT-FET and SiNW-FET have been investigated, where CNT-FET has been proved to be a better choice for gate leakage reduction.