Quantum Transport Simulations of CNTFETs: Performance Assessment and Comparison Study with GNRFETs

In this paper, we explore the electrical properties and high-frequency performance of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs), based on the non-equilibrium Green’s functions (NEGF) solved self - consistently with Poisson’s equations. The calculated results show that CNTFETs exhibit superior performance compared with graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors (GNRFETs), such as better control ability of the gate on the channel, higher drive current with lower subthreshold leakage current, and lower subthreshold-swing (SS). Due to larger bandstructure-limited velocity in CNTFETs, ballistic CNTFETs present better high-frequency performance limit than that of Si MOSFETs. The parameter effects of CNTFETs are also investigated. In addition, to enhance the immunity against short - channel effects (SCE), hetero - material - gate CNTFETs (HMGCNTFETs) have been proposed, and we present a detailed numerical simulation to analyze the performances of scaling down, and conclude that HMG-CNTFETs can meet the ITRS’10 requirements better than CNTs.