Physics-integrated Neural Network for Quantum Transport Prediction of Field-effect Transistor

Quantum-mechanics-based transport simulation is of importance for the design of ultra-short channel field-effect transistors (FETs) with its capability of understanding the physical mechanism, while facing the primary challenge of the high computational intensity. Traditional machine learning is expected to accelerate the optimization of FET design, yet its application in this field is limited by the lack of both high-fidelity datasets and the integration of physical knowledge. Here, we introduced a physics-integrated neural network framework to predict the transport curves of sub-5-nm gate-all-around (GAA) FETs using an in-house developed high-fidelity database. The transport curves in the database are collected from literature and our first-principles calculations. Beyond silicon, we included indium arsenide, indium phosphide, and selenium nanowires with different structural phases as the FET channel materials. Then, we built a physical-knowledge-integrated hyper vector neural network (PHVNN), in which five new physical features were added into the inputs for prediction transport characteristics, achieving a sufficiently low mean absolute error of 0.39. In particular, ~98% of the current prediction residuals are within one order of magnitude. Using PHVNN, we efficiently screened out the symmetric p-type GAA FETs that possess the same figures of merit with the n-type ones, which are crucial for the fabrication of homogeneous CMOS circuits. Finally, our automatic differentiation analysis provides interpretable insights into the PHVNN, which highlights the important contributions of our new input parameters and improves the reliability of PHVNN. Our approach provides an effective method for rapidly screening appropriate GAA FETs with the prospect of accelerating the design process of next-generation electronic devices.