Impact of phonon scattering mechanisms on the performance of silicene nanoribbon field-effect transistors

Abstract Rigorous efforts are invested globally in the semiconductor industry to leverage next-generation nanoelectronics beyond Moore’s law. Among them, silicene is foreseen as a viable two-dimensional (2D) material for future transistor applications. In this study, we assessed the performance of field-effect transistors (FETs) based on silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs) in terms of width scaling, length scaling and non-ballistic phonon scattering effects. Simulation of the channel material and transistor is performed based on the nearest neighbour tight-binding model and the top-of-the-barrier nanotransistor model, respectively. The device performance is analysed by graphically extracting the on-to-off current ratio, subthreshold swing and drain-induced barrier lowering from the current–voltage characteristics. It is also revealed that the impact of phonon scattering effects becomes less significant as the channel lengths of the SiNR FETs become shorter than the mean free paths. Overall, it is shown that the width and length scaling are among the crucial factors in designing nanoribbon-based FETs owing to their unique properties.