High performance negative capacitance field-effect transistor featuring low off-state current, high on/off current ratio, and steep sub-60 mV dec(-1) swing

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrated that the 5-nm-thick HfAlOx negative capacitance transistor (NCFET) with optimized Al doping can achieve a minimum 33 mV dec(-1) subthreshold swing (SS), an ultralow l(off) of 7.44 fA mu m(-1), and a high l(on)//l(off) ratio of 1.9 x 10(8). The NC switching with sub-60 mV dec(-1) SS can be implemented from V-DS - 0.2 V to 0.8 V due to an ultralow off-state leakage current. The experimental results reveal that well-controlled Al doping in HfAlOx not only reduces off-state leakage of the transistor, but also improves the ferroelectric NC effect to achieve a sub-60 mV dec-1 switching under a favorably low sub-1 voltage. This scaled HfAlOx NCFET with optimized Al doping and fluorine defect passivation shows the great potential for the application of low power logic devices. (C) 2020 The Japan Society of Applied Physics