Computational study of gate-induced drain leakage in 2D-semiconductor field-effect transistors

Gate-induced drain leakage (GIDL) is one of the main leakage mechanisms in field-effect transistors (FETs), especially access transistors that are widely employed in a variety of memory technologies. In this work, GIDL in emerging two-dimensional (2D) FETs is evaluated for the first time, by employing a novel dissipative quantum transport methodology based on Büttiker probes with band-to-band tunneling capability. It is shown that 2D semiconductors with relatively large bandgaps and favorable effective masses compared to that of silicon can greatly reduce GIDL, which is a compelling reason for using such materials in future memory technologies. Materials and device design considerations are discussed for minimizing the GIDL current. This work also provides guidelines for performance/scalability analysis of low-leakage applications of 2D FETs.