Performance analysis of carbon-based tunnel field-effect transistors for high frequency and ultralow power applications

We perform atomistic simulations and energy-delay analysis on tunnel FETs (TFETs) based on partially unzipped carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and compare their performance against conventional homojunction CNT-TFETs. The device simulations show that the carbon heterojunctions could provide much larger on current compared to homojunction CNT-TFETs due to the effective small bandgap for the injected carriers, without paying a large penalty for off current and subthreshold swing. Subsequent energy-delay analysis shows that these heterojunctions could enable high performance operation and could prove favorable compared to a conventional Ge-source heterojunction TFET. Homojunction TFETs are found to be useful for low-frequency and low-power applications. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3524826]