Nanowire Tunnel FET with simultaneously reduced Subthermionic Subthreshold Swing and Off-current due to Negative Capacitance and Voltage Pinning effects.

Nanowire Tunnel FETs have been proposed as the most advanced 1D-devices that break the thermionic 60mV/decade of the subthreshold swing (SS) of MOSFETs by using quantum mechanical band-to-band tunneling and excellent electrostatic control. Meanwhile, Negative Capacitance (NC) of ferroelectrics has been proposed as a promising performance booster of MOSFETs to bypass the mentioned fundamental limit by exploiting the differential amplification of the gate voltage under certain conditions. We combine these two principles into a single structure, a negative capacitance heterostructure Tunnel FET, and experimentally demonstrate a double beneficial effect: (i) a super steep SS down to 10mV/decade and an extended low slope region due to the NC effect and, (ii) a remarkable off-current reduction that is experimentally observed and explained for the first time by the effect of ferroelectric's dipoles, which set the surface potential in a slightly negative value and further blocks the source tunneling current in the off-state. State-of-the-art InAs/InGaAsSb/GaSb nanowire TFETs are employed as the baseline transistor and PZT and Silicon-doped HfO2 as ferroelectric materials.