Research Proposal

Proposed broad area title :- Studies on non-classical MOSFETs/MOSFET based circuits.

In recent years ballistic Silicon nanowire(SiNW) metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors(MOSFETs) has emerged as one of the most promising structures to extend the scaling of CMOS devices. CMOS circuits constituted with n- & p-SiNW MOSFETs show better performance than their planar counterpart.

MOSFETs were conceived during 1950s along with several other devices such as thyristor, Solar cell, HBT, Tunnel diode etc. In 1960, Kahng & Atalla fabricated a working MOSFET using the IC fabrication technology. MOSFETs provided some major advantages over BJTs which helped in achieving higher packing density. More than 95% of the present semiconductor market is controlled by MOSFETs.

As packing density started becoming higher & higher on ICs scientists & engineers strived further to achieve still higher packing density to get higher speed for less area. When the size of transistors was reduced to a very small scale, they stopped behaving according to classical Newtonian mechanics & Quantum physics came into picture to govern their behaviour. As a result a new era of nanoelectronics started . Today the latest microprocessor chip from Intel is being fabricated by using 45 nm technology.

For the production of ICs in earlier days Germanium was used widely but due to its higher leakage current it was found to be unsuitable for high temperature applications. Silicon took over Germanium because of its superior electrical properties including stability for high temperature applications along with the ease of forming an excellent native oxide(SiO2) on it by thermal oxidation. During MTech. period we investigated the effects of some important parameters such as SiNW diameter, oxide thickness, Quantum capacitance & number of channels on the propagation delay of CMOS compatible SiNW based inverters. The variation of the propagation delay with the threshold voltage was also studied. It was found that the delay decreases significantly if the number of channels in each n- & p-MOS structure increases. The results obtained were in line with the benchmarking data & could be useful for researchers working in this field. Further investigation can be done by including some finite scattering events in the current expression of ballistic SiNW MOSFETs. The effect of such scattering events on the circuit performance parameters may be investigated. The dependence of the performance parameters

on temperature can also be studied. In our work we assumed that the channels are of equal diameter. Fabricated multichannel SiNW MOSFETs may have different channel diameters. The effects of such channel size distribution on the performance of SiNW MOSFET based circuit can also be investigated in future.

Although I carried out my research in the aforementioned area but during my PhD the research may not be strictly limited to this area but it can be any area that come under the scope of VLSI, nanoaelectronics & other such similar allied areas. In addition to the theoretical study and research simulations can also be carried out for accessing the behaviour more accurately. As these things are directly related to practical applications, implications of this kind of research can lead to a very high impact on human society.