Impact of TFET Unidirectionality and Ambipolarity on the Performance of 6T SRAM Cells

We use mixed device-circuit simulations to predict the performance of 6T static RAM (SRAM) cells implemented with tunnel-FETs (TFETs). Idealized template devices are used to assess the impact of device unidirectionality, which is inherent to TFETs and identify the most promising configuration for th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE journal of the Electron Devices Society Vol. 3; no. 3; pp. 223 - 232
Main Authors Strangio, Sebastiano, Palestri, Pierpaolo, Esseni, David, Selmi, Luca, Crupi, Felice, Richter, Simon, Qing-Tai Zhao, Mantl, Siegfried
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.05.2015
Subjects
CMOS integrated circuits
Computer architecture
Microprocessors
Performance evaluation
SRAM
SRAM cells
TCAD
TFET
Transistors
VLSI
VLSI
SRAM
TFET
technology computer aided design (TCAD)
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Summary:We use mixed device-circuit simulations to predict the performance of 6T static RAM (SRAM) cells implemented with tunnel-FETs (TFETs). Idealized template devices are used to assess the impact of device unidirectionality, which is inherent to TFETs and identify the most promising configuration for the access transistors. The same template devices are used to investigate the V DD range, where TFETs may be advantageous compared to conventional CMOS. The impact of device ambipolarity on SRAM operation is also analyzed. Realistic device templates extracted from experimental data of fabricated state-of-the-art silicon pTFET are then used to estimate the performance gap between the simulation of idealized TFETs and the best experimental implementations.
ISSN:2168-6734
2168-6734
DOI:10.1109/JEDS.2015.2392793