Quantum transport simulation of III–V MOSFETs based on Wigner Monte Carlo approach

Abstract

III-V compound semiconductors are expected as a post-Si channel material, because they have higher electron mobility and lower effective mass than Si. Actually, the high performance of InGaAs MOSFETs with high-k gate dielectrics has been demonstrated [1,2]. On the other hand, due to a quasi-ballistic behavior of electron transport, III-V channel MOSFETs may be more vulnerable by quantum mechanical effects such as quantum reflection and tunneling, as compared to conventional Si-MOSFETs. In this paper, we investigate quantum transport effects in III-V channel MOSFETs by using a Wigner Monte Carlo (WMC) simulation [3,4], which can fully incorporate the quantum transport effects. As a result, we found that the quantum reflection reduces on-current, while the source-drain (SD) direct tunneling increases subthreshold current even as the channel length is larger than 10 nm.