27. September 2024
In his recent IEEE TED article “On the Potential of Ambipolar Schottky-Based Ferroelectric Transistor Designs for Enhanced Memory Windows in Scaled Devices“, GTS Senior Scientist Mischa Thesberg uses TCAD simulation to demonstrate the currently underappreciated potential of ambipolar Schottky-based ferroelectric transistors (AS-FeFETs), currently mainly used for reconfigurable transistor (R-FET) applications, as a more conventional memory technology.
Ferroelectric memory devices have seen intense interest over the last decade. However, in heavily scaled devices such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI), FinFETs, and nanowire-based FETs the observed ferroelectric memory window (MW) is heavily degraded owing to the fact that additional majority carriers cannot be sourced as there is no “bulk.” Thus, the device never enters accumulation and polarization switching is suppressed due to the semiconductor channel remaining depleted. Here, Mischa and his team promote an ambipolar Schottky-based ferroelectric transistor (AS-FeFET) as an alternative design. They demonstrate that such devices—owing to their ambipolar nature and thus the ability to source both types of carriers—exhibit MWs that are consistently ∼ 40%–60% larger than conventional devices for the same programming conditions, giving them great potential for more broad applications.
Open Access Paper
We have chosen to make the paper available through Open Access because we feel it’s important to support the free exchange of ideas. The paper is available through IEEE Xplore (DOI: 10.1109/TED.2024.3459878) – or you can download the paper at MyGTS.
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All covered in GTS Framework
All simulations in this work were done using the ferroelectric and Schottky-contact models available within the GTS Framework.
