Room Temperature Negative Differential Resistance in Gate-All-Around Field-Effect Transistors With 1D Active Channels

We report on the presence of a Negative Differential Resistance (NDR) in a Gate-All-Around Field Effect Transistor (GAAFET) with 1D nanowires or nanotubes as the active conducting channel. Here, the drain current is seen to decrease sharply at relatively higher gate voltages. The onset of NDR is tunable with device topology. The NDR mechanism in this work is due to the applied gate voltage, not the drain-source voltage, a feature which promises low-voltage application of this effect. The results are based on a self-consistent ensemble Monte Carlo charge-carrier transport model with an electrostatic solver that solves Gauss's law in integral form.