Hmm, it begins and hope it continues …
It is said that morning shows the day however we would like
to be cautious and see how this year unfolds. For now, Aftab has started the
engine and hopefully 3-4 more are on their way this month. Aftab’s MS thesis entitled,
“Tin – An unlikely ally for silicon field effect transistors?” is accepted to Physica
Status Solidi (RRL) - Rapid Research Letters.
In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of tin (Sn), by
alloying it with silicon, to use SiSn as a channel material to extend the
performance of silicon based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS).
Our density functional theory (DFT) based simulation shows that incorporation
of tin reduces the band gap of Si(Sn).We fabricated our device with SiSn
channel material using a low cost and scalable thermal diffusion process of tin
into silicon. Our high-κ/metal gate based multi-gate-field-effect-transistors
(MugFETs) using SiSn as channel material show performance enhancement which is
in accordance with the theoretical analysis.
According to the esteemed reviewers the results are “original”
and “interesting”. After presenting in Device Research Conference 2013, 3rd Berkeley Symposium on Energy Efficient
Electronic Systems and IEEE NMDC 2013, we are ready to roll out SiSn based NMOS
and much deeper analysis of the material-device interaction to extend the Moore’s
Law.
Congrats Aftab M.
Hussain, Hossain M. Fahad, Nirpendra Singh, Galo A. Torres Sevilla, Udo
Schwingenschlögl, Muhammad M. Hussain!