Low-Power Vertical Tunnel Field-Effect Transistor Ternary Inverter

In this study, vertical tunnel FET-based ternary CMOS (T-CMOS) is introduced and its electrical characteristics are investigated using TCAD device and mixed-mode simulations with experimentally calibrated tunneling parameters. This new T-CMOS utilizes two different types of tunneling currents to form three different output voltage states: (1) source-to-drain tunneling current; and (2) conventional source-to-channel tunneling current. To form a half supply voltage (VDD) output voltage during the inverter operation, the n-/p-type devices of the proposed T-CMOS are designed to have constant source-to-drain tunneling current regardless of gate voltage (VGS) by using nitride spacer between gate and drain. Also, typical binary inverter operation is performed using the source-to-channel tunneling. In voltage transfer characteristics (VTC), it is confirmed that there is the clear half VDD state after matching the tunneling currents of the n-/p-type devices. It is revealed that the stable half VDD state cannot be achievable if the currents are mismatched by gate workfunction, gate dielectric thickness, and interface trap variations, implying that the current matching between n-/p-type devices is crucial to obtain stable ternary operations.