A.
Toral-Lopez
*a,
F.
Pasadas
b,
E. G.
Marin
a,
A.
Medina-Rull
a,
J. M.
Gonzalez-Medina
c,
F. G.
Ruiz‡
a,
D.
Jiménez
b and
A.
Godoy‡
*a
aDepartamento de Electrónica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain
bDepartament d’Enginyeria Electrònica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain
cGlobal TCAD Solutions GmbH., Bösendorferstraße 1/12, 1010, Vienna, Austria
First published on 12th March 2021
Two-dimensional materials (2DMs) are a promising alternative to complement and upgrade high-frequency electronics. However, in order to boost their adoption, the availability of numerical tools and physically-based models able to support the experimental activities and to provide them with useful guidelines becomes essential. In this context, we propose a theoretical approach that combines numerical simulations and small-signal modeling to analyze 2DM-based FETs for radio-frequency applications. This multi-scale scheme takes into account non-idealities, such as interface traps, carrier velocity saturation, or short channel effects, by means of self-consistent physics-based numerical calculations that later feed the circuit level via a small-signal model based on the dynamic intrinsic capacitances of the device. At the circuit stage, the possibilities range from the evaluation of the performance of a single device to the design of complex circuits combining multiple transistors. In this work, we validate our scheme against experimental results and exemplify its use and capability assessing the impact of the channel scaling on the performance of MoS2-based FETs targeting RF applications.
The possibility to transfer 2DMs in almost any substrate expands the range of applications with respect to conventional RF technologies. Indeed, measurements of MoS2 devices fabricated on flexible substrates show values of fT = 13.5 GHz and fmax = 10.5 GHz,12 not that far from RF performances achieved with the same material on rigid oxides, fT = 42 GHz and fmax = 50 GHz.12 Better RF performance would be achievable as further improvements come in MoS2 and other promising 2DMs such as PdSe214 or PtSe2.15 In this regard, while 2D semiconductors are constrained by a lower fT than graphene (due to the superior carrier mobility and saturation velocity of the latter), they are not limited by the gapless band-structure that impacts the current saturation in GFETs leading to a reduced voltage and power gain.6 Indeed, GFETs have behaved rather poor in terms of fmax,6 limiting the highest operating frequency of power amplifiers. It is in this field where more research is required to shed light on the potential of MoS2 and other TMDs to develop improved RF applications.16
In this arena, with the 2D RF technology readiness in its early infancy, the computational tools able to support and rationalize the experimental activities are more essential than ever so as to: (i) interpret the experimental measurements; (ii) gain understanding to improve the capabilities of the devices; (iii) assess their performance and benchmark them against conventional technologies; (iv) explore new device designs; and (v) foresee the RF limits of novel technologies.
In this context, this work presents a multi-scale scheme17 that combines numerical simulations with a small-signal model to analyze the RF performance of 2DM-based FETs. The fully detailed behavior of the device in the static operation regime obtained from the numerical simulator is combined with a small-signal model specifically developed for 2DM-based FETs.18 Thus, we are able to extend the analysis from a device to a circuit level. To this purpose, we first introduce the theoretical basis of the calculations. Then, the multi-scale method is validated against the dc and high-frequency measurements of MoS2 transistors reported in (ref. 7). Finally, fT and fmax are evaluated for different gate lengths to analyze the RF potential performance of MoS2 transistors, and then the main conclusions of the work are outlined.
With the purpose of tightening the approach to the state-of-the-art, and make realistic prospects for that technology, the studied architecture can be taken from an experimental setup of a particular 2DM-based device. Then, a self-consistent numerical simulation in the static regime is carried out, providing detailed information of the main electrostatic and transport physical magnitudes governing the transistor response, including the intrinsic device and the parasitic elements involved to contact it. Next, the intrinsic magnitudes can be extracted and fed into the small-signal model, so to have a distilled description of the device physics. The extrinsic and parasitic elements are thus isolated, and can be later reintroduced in the small-signal model, becoming external, technology-dependent parameters to the core model. That approach enables to project the RF performance of the devices and materials regardless the current technology constraints and provides a flexible and at the same time robust description. The overall picture of the proposed procedure is shown in Fig. 1. The stages are described in more detail hereunder.
The impact of non-idealities is also included in the simulations. In particular, three remarkable effects are considered: interface traps, electric field dependent mobility and access and contact resistances. The impact of the gate electric field on the mobility might be also of relevance as it has been studied in (ref. 19 and 20) but requires a detailed analysis of the scattering processes in MoS2. For the former, an arbitrary energetic profile for either donors or acceptors traps can be defined to evaluate the surface charge density associated with a certain interface as a function of the electrostatic potential and Fermi level (see S4 at ESI†). As for the mobility, we consider the electric field induced degradation (see S5 at ESI†), following the expression proposed in (ref. 21).
When analyzing a device, the numerical modeling described above is applied to the complete structure, as depicted in Fig. 1, which comprises channel plus access regions and contact resistances. This enables a full self-consistent solution of the electrostatic and transport dependencies in the device. Then, the contact resistances, that are bias independent, are removed with the aim of simulating the intrinsic device and extract its small-signal parameters as explained in the following.
Then, we compute the reference-independent dynamic description of a three-terminal device by calculating the intrinsic capacitances, Cij, as the charge derivative at terminal i with respect to a varying voltage applied to terminal j, assuming that the bias at any other terminal remains constant:
(1) |
Fig. 2 Small-signal equivalent circuit suited to 2DM-based FETs.24 The equivalent circuit of the intrinsic device is framed in blue. The small-signal elements are: gm = ∂IDS/∂Vgs transconductance; gDS = ∂IDS/∂VDS output conductance; and Cgs, Cgd, Csd, and Cdg intrinsic capacitances. Rg is the gate resistance and Rd and Rs account for the contact resistances of the drain and source, respectively. They connect the intrinsic (noted G, D and S) and extrinsic (G,e, D,e and S,e) gate, drain and source terminals. |
Considering the equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 2 as a two-port network connected in a common-source configuration allows the assessment of two main figures of merit for RF devices: the cut-off frequency, fT, and the maximum oscillation frequency, fmax, evaluated from the current and power gain, respectively.
With the intention of emulating the effect of the contact resistances (RC) in the numerical simulations, two doped regions are added at both edges of the semiconductor layer and its doping is modified to adjust RC = Rs = Rd to the reported experimental value (2 kΩ μm). Interface traps are a relevant magnitude in MoS2 devices, as it is discussed in (ref. 28 and 29), although more effort is still required to achieve a deeper and more comprehensive understanding. However, as the detailed distribution of interface traps is not the main goal of this work, we have considered a constant energetic profile in both interfaces of the channel that provides the best agreement with the experimental data.30 In particular, we set two energetic profiles: (i) at the top gate insulator interface, a constant energetic profile of donors traps with Dit = 1012 cm−2 eV−1 is considered from mid-gap up to 0.57 eV towards the conduction band edge; and (ii) at the substrate interface, a constant energetic profile also of donor traps from midgap to the conduction band edge (i.e. 0.9 eV above midgap) is considered with Dit = 2.5 × 1011 cm−2 eV−1. The channel is undoped with electron mobility μ = 85 cm2 V−1 s−1, saturation velocity vsat = 2.8 × 106 cm s−1, electron effective mass m* = 0.61 m0 and bandgap width Eg = 1.8 eV. The experimental data and the simulation results are depicted in Fig. 3, showing a very good agreement with the bias point employed in the RF experimental characterization, VGS,e = −3 V and VDS,e = 2 V, marked by a square. Remarkably, at this bias point the resistance associated with the access regions (as computed from the self-consistent simulations), have comparable values to RC, reaching Rs,acc = 3.3 kΩ μm and Rd,acc = 3.1 kΩ μm at the source and drain ends, respectively and being rather bias dependent. This point highlights the strong impact that these gate-underlapped areas can produce on the RF performance of the device.31
Fig. 3 Experimental data of a MoS2 FET reported in (ref. 7) (symbols) and results from the numerical solver (line). The operating point for RF experimental measurements is indicated by a square. |
Using these results, we can assess the proposed approach by confronting the RF figures of merit resulting from it with those experimentally characterized and reported in (ref. 7). To this purpose, the values of the small-signal parameters of the device are first extracted following the procedure previously described and fed into the small-signal model (Table 1).
Parameter | Value | Parameter | Value |
---|---|---|---|
g m | 0.0828 mS μm−1 | g DS | 0.5047 mS μm−1 |
C gd | 0.280 fF μm−1 | C dg | 0.442 fF μm−1 |
C sd | −0.071 fF μm−1 | C gs | 0.604 fF μm−1 |
The current gain (h21) and the Mason's unilateral gain (U) obtained from the multi-scale scheme, i.e. combining the small-signal-model and numerical-solver analysis, are depicted in Fig. 4 along with the experimental data,7 demonstrating an excellent correspondence and holding the soundness of the theoretical procedure. fT and fmax, obtained from the numerical calculations, marked within the figures, are also shown in very close agreement with the reported measurements: fT = 2.63 GHz and fmax = 2.16 GHz.
Fig. 4 (a) Current gain h21 and (b) Mason's unilateral gain U calculated using the multi-scale (MS) approach (blue lines) and compared against the experimental values extracted from (ref. 7) (red lines with symbols). The arrows indicate the values of fT and fmax. |
Once the multi-scale approach is validated, we exemplify its utility by proceeding with a projective analysis of the potential of MoS2 FETs for RF applications; in particular extracting fT and fmax for devices with channel lengths ranging from 10 μm down to 50 nm. In order to focus on the material intrinsic capabilities and to reduce the role of extrinsic resistive elements in the predicted behavior, the 2D-FET is improved by reducing the access regions length to 5 nm and setting contact resistances to 100 Ω μm, which is the desirable value for 2DMs to compete on the RF arena25 and not so far from the minimum value achieved experimentally, 240 Ω μm,32 and well above the theoretical limit of 30 Ω μm.33
Fig. 5 shows fT as a function of the gate length, Lg. Each marker of the solid curves corresponds to the result achieved from the application of the multi-scale procedure to a device with a particular Lg under a given VDS and considering the VGS bias that causes the maximum transconductance. Along with these results, we show the physical limit represented by vsat/2πLg, i.e. the inverse of the minimum transit time of charge carriers in the channel, that also serves as a guide for the eyes of the 1/Lg scaling; and the 1/Lg2 trend that conventionally commands the performance in longer channels. We also show, for the sake of comparison, the results for different experimental devices based on graphene, MoS2 and III–V compounds taken from the literature (solid and hollow symbols).6,9,12,34–41
Fig. 5 Cut-off frequency fT as a function of the gate length for different drain biases (solid lines with markers). The 1/Lg2 trend and the physical limit (that also serves as a guideline for the 1/Lg scaling) are also depicted (dashed lines). Solid and hollow markers correspond to experimental works.6,9,12,34–41 |
According to Fig. 5, a change in the scaling trend of MoS2fT, from 1/Lg2 for long channels to 1/Lg for short channels can be expected. This can be explained due to the fT rough dependence on ∼gm/2π(Cgs + Cgd). For long channels, gm is proportional to 1/Lg, and (Cgs + Cgd) to Lg, resulting in a trend ∼1/Lg2; while for short channels gm saturates and fT scales only with the capacitive response, to 1/Lg. The transition from 1/Lg2 to 1/Lg is observed in MoS2 still for long channels, i.e. Lg ≈ 1 μm due to gm early saturation.6 The vsat impact is also revealed in the dependence of fT on VDS: when the channel length is scaled, the performance is barely improved with VDS, as it approaches the physical limit, i.e., the carrier drift velocity cannot increase any further with the electric field. The values predicted are in good agreement with experimental state-of-the-art RF measurements of MoS2 devices, demonstrating the prediction capability of the presented tool, that can be exploited to study any candidate in the 2DM realm. The experimental results shown for graphene and III–V compounds contextualize the progresses already achieved by MoS2 electronics and the limitations associated to its lower saturation velocity.
Concerning fmax, Fig. 6 plots it as a function of Lg for different VDS biases, together with the 1/Lg and lines used as a guide for the eyes, and the experimental results from different technologies. For long channel devices, fmax varies with 1/Lg as fmax depends roughly on considering that the gate resistance Rg si proportional to 1/Lg.42 For short channel devices, Lg < 500 nm, the trend changes from 1/Lg to , showing a small over-increment at the limit of the diffusive regime, as it has also been predicted for GFETs in (ref. 43). Although the experimental values correspond to diverse technologies and measured under different operating bias points, the measurements show good agreement with our predictions. More importantly, MoS2 FETs demonstrate to be competitive or even to overcome graphene devices performance for the smaller channel lengths, thanks to their larger output conductance, postulating MoS2 as a worthy 2D alternative for RF power circuits, being nevertheless still far from consolidated III–V architectures.
Fig. 6 Maximum oscillation frequency fmax as a function of the gate length for different drain biases (solid lines with markers). The 1/Lg and trends are indicated by dashed lines. Solid and hollow markers correspond to experimental works.6,9,12,34–41 |
Footnotes |
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/d0na00953a |
‡ Pervasive Electronics Advanced Research Laboratory, CITIC, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain. |
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2021 |