A Tunnel Dielectric-Based Tunnel FET

In this letter, for the first time, we proposed and demonstrated a novel tunnel dielectric-based tunnel FET (TD-TFET). Instead of using semiconductor band-to-band tunneling currents to form drive currents as in normal TFET, tunneling currents through ultrathin dielectric form the drive currents in the TD-TFET. The fabricated devices have achieved 55-mV/decade SS, which breaks the 60-mV/decade SS barrier. It has also realized higher than 1 × 10⁵ I_ON/IOFF ratio. The unwanted ambipolar effect is greatly reduced, and OFF currents can be lowered to 1 × 10^-14 A/μm level. These promising device characteristics make this novel TD-TFET very attractive for the future low standby power applications.