Simulation of quantum transport in an ultra-small SOI MOSFET

Industry predictions estimate that, within a few years, semiconductor devices with active regions of less than 10 nm in length will be in production. It is well known that the active regions in these devices are smaller than the relative phase coherence lengths, and quantum transport will govern the operation of these devices. With the advent of tri-gate and quantum wire devices, 2D transport simulations become inadequate as the third dimension (width) must be included to account for the underlying physics present in the problem. Here, we present results of an efficient 3D, self-consistent quantum transport simulation applied to an ultra-small SOI MOSFET. We find that the transition between a wide source contact and a discretely doped, narrow channel sets up a resonant tunneling situation in which the channel becomes fully populated and then dissipates as the gate voltage is swept.