Subthreshold swing characteristics of nanowire tunneling FETs with variation in gate coverage and channel diameter

• We demonstrate the simulated subthreshold swing (SS) of silicon nanowire TFETs.
• The SS values are affected by changing channel thickness and gate coverage ratio.
• For the TFETs, channel thickness is a major factor that determines the SS value.

In this study, we demonstrate the simulated subthreshold swing (SS) of silicon nanowire tunneling field-effect transistors (NWTFETs) by varying both the channel diameter from 10 nm to 40 nm and the gate coverage ratio from 30% to 100%. Our simulation work reveals that both a decrease in the channel diameter and an increase in the gate coverage ratio contribute to a reduction in the SS. Additionally, our work shows that the magnitude of the on-current depends linearly on the gate coverage ratio and that the drain current increases with a decrease in the channel diameter. Thus, an NWTFET with a channel diameter of 10 nm and a gate coverage ratio of 100% exhibits superior electrical characteristics over other silicon NWTFETs in that the NWTFET shows a point SS of 22.7 mV/dec, an average SS of 56.3 mV/dec, an on/off current ratio of ∼1013, and an on-current of ∼10−5 A/μm.