Heavy ion induced single-event-transient effects in nanoscale ferroelectric vertical tunneling transistors by TCAD simulation

Abstract Tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) are strong candidates for ‘Internet of Things’ electronic devices, due to their ultra-low power consumption. In this work, we propose a novel nanoscale silicon-on-insulator double-gate ferroelectric tunneling field-effect transistor (SOI DG-FeTFET), and single-event-transient (SET) effects are investigated by means of two-dimensional technology computer-aided design simulations. In addition, we perform systematic analysis and comparison with a silicon-on-insulator double-gate ferroelectric field-effect transistor (SOI DG-FeET) . The simulation results show that the peak value of the drain transient current achieved by our DG-FeTFET is up to 2.72 × 10 –4 A at 10 MeV·cm 2 mg −1 , which is much higher than the on-state current ( I on ) ∼ 7.63 × 10 −5 A at V d = 0.5 V. Moreover, our results show that the DG-FeTFET is more susceptible to SET effects than FeFET. The results also show that the bipolar amplification effect can be neglected, and that the drift-diffusion mechanism is dominant in the carrier collection process in the DG-FeTFET. The transient responses of the single event effect are also strongly correlated with the strike location of heavy ions, with the most sensitive part being close to the area where interband tunneling occurs and the electric field is the strongest. These analyses may prove relevant for applications SOI DG-FeTFETs/FeFETs in environments where radiation is present.