Sub-60-mV/decade Negative Capacitance FinFET With Sub-10-nm Hafnium-Based Ferroelectric Capacitor

Abstract

The negative capacitance (NC) of ferroelectric materials has paved the way for achieving sub-60-mV/decade switching feature in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) field-effect transistors, by simply inserting a ferroelectric thin layer in the gate stack. However, in order to utilize the ferroelectric capacitor (as a breakthrough technique to overcome the Boltzmann limit of the device using thermionic emission process), the thickness of the ferroelectric layer should be scaled down to sub-10-nm for ease of integration with conventional CMOS logic devices. In this paper, we demonstrate an NC fin-shaped field-effect transistor (FinFET) with a 6-nm-thick HfZrO ferroelectric capacitor. The performance parameters of NC FinFET such as on-/off-state currents and subthreshold slope are compared with those of the conventional FinFET. Furthermore, a repetitive and reliable steep switching feature of the NC FinFET at various drain voltages is demonstrated.