학술논문

Dynamical Effects of Excess Carriers on SOI FeFET Memory Device Operations
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices IEEE Trans. Electron Devices Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on. 69(11):6459-6464 Nov, 2022
Subject
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Iron
FeFETs
Switches
Tunneling
Silicon-on-insulator
Semiconductor device modeling
Logic gates
Ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs)
MOSFET
semiconductor device models
silicon-on-insulator (SOI)
Language
ISSN
0018-9383
1557-9646
Abstract
We study the carrier dynamics of memory program (PGM) and readout operations for an n-type silicon-on-insulator (SOI) ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) through TCAD simulations. We found that gate-induced drain leakages (GIDL) during the PGM operation with large negative gate biases can result in excess hole concentrations as high as 7.3 $\times 10^{{20}}$ cm $^{-{3}}$ in the potential well formed in the SOI channel. The hole accumulation causes a large electric field across the ferroelectric (FE) layer and results in a polarization boost at a low PGM voltage. For a nano-scale SOI channel, the retention time of the excess holes can exceed microseconds according to our simulations. The outflow of the excess holes leads to a transient effect in the drain current during the readout operation, and we observed additional retention effects for the FeFET memory window due to the hole dynamic effects on the electrostatics and the FE polarizations. While the excess holes result in a ~100 ps delay in the readout phase before a large read margin can be detected, they have boosted the PGM speed and polarization window. The boosted polarization can be retained for milliseconds, and potentially beyond, resulting in an appreciable ON/OFF ratio during readout. Therefore, such effects can be utilized for low-power memory applications through proper SOI FeFET designs with the awareness of excess carrier dynamics.