Ballistic Transport in SiGe and Strained-Si MOSFETs

We investigate the performance of bulk silicon and strained-silicon nanoscale MOSFETs in the ballistic regime, with the purpose of identifying possible advantages of silicon-germanium technology in devices approaching the ballistic regime. Investigation is performed with a 2D program that solves in a self-consistent way the Poisson equation, the Schrödinger equation with density functional theory, and the continuity equation for ballistic electrons. In the ballistic regime, when mobility has no physical meaning, strained-silicon FETs seem only to provide smaller short channel effects, but no improvement as far as transconductance and drive current are concerned.