High-Performance Reconfigurable Si Nanowire Field-Effect Transistor Based on Simplified Device Design

Abstract

Reconfigurable field-effect transistors (RFETs) are of interest as devices for dynamically switching between n- and p-type polarity which enables different logic computations using the same hardware. So far, RFETs have been realized with one or even two additional program gates for accomplishing reconfigurability. This paper presents an RFET design with just one single-gate on a silicon nanowire channel. Based on measured and device simulation data of a double-gate (DG) RFET, it is shown that the proposed simplified single-gate (SG) RFET achieves the same functionality and dc characteristics as the more complex DG-RFET. Besides reducing the wiring for the program gate(s), the SG-RFET has the additional advantage of being scalable to smaller channel length and thus achieving higher operating speed.