Foreword Special Issue on Transistors With Steep Subthreshold Swing for Low-Power Electronics

The increasing power consumption of integrated circuits is today the main impediment to the density scaling of integrated circuit technology. The reduction of supply voltage is the most effective way to reduce power; however, using modern transistors voltage reduction is traded against reduced speed or limited by a rising off-state leakage, neither of which is desirable. A better tradeoff can be achieved if the fundamental current control mechanism provides a steep turn-on characteristic. Steep means better than 60 mV/decade at room temperature, the limit obtained by barrier lowering in a bipolar transistor or metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) when the current is dominated by the thermionic emission of carriers above the energy barrier in the base or channel region.