Published in IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 60, 951 (2013).

SymFET: A Proposed Symmetric Graphene Tunneling Field Effect Transistor

Pei Zhao,¹ Randall M. Feenstra,² Gong Gu,³ and Debdeep Jena¹
¹Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556
²Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
³Dept. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996

Abstract

In this work, an analytical model to calculate the channel potential and current-voltage characteristics in a Symmetric tunneling Field-Effect-Transistor (SymFET) is presented. The current in a SymFET flows by tunneling from a n-type graphene layer to a p-type graphene layer. A large current peak occurs when the Dirac points are aligned at a particular drain-to- source bias V_DS. Our model shows that the current of the SymFET is very weakly dependent on temperature. The resonant current peak is controlled by chemical doping and applied gate bias. The on/off ratio increases with graphene coherence length and doping. The symmetric resonant peak is a good candidate for high-speed analog applications, and can enable digital logic similar to the BiSFET. Our analytical model also oers the benefit of permitting simple analysis of features such as the full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of the resonant peak and higher order harmonics of the nonlinear current. The SymFET takes advantage of the perfect symmetry of the bandstructure of 2D graphene, a feature that is not present in conventional semiconductors.

Click here for preprint of paper, in pdf format.

Return to Home Page of Feenstra group