Scaling carbon nanotube complementary transistors to 5-nm gate lengths

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 355; no. 6322; pp. 271 - 276
• Main Authors: Qiu, Chenguang, Zhang, Zhiyong, Xiao, Mengmeng, Yang, Yingjun, Zhong, Donglai, Peng, Lian-Mao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 20.01.2017; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Carbon; Carbon nanotubes; CMOS; Contact length; Devices; Electric potential; Field effect transistors; Graphene; Metal oxide semiconductors; Nanostructure; Nanotechnology; Nanotubes; Scaling; Semiconductor devices; Semiconductors; Silicon; Switching; Transistors; Voltage
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.aaj1628

High-performance top-gated carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNT FETs) with a gate length of 5 nanometers can be fabricated that perform better than silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) FETs at the same scale. A scaling trend study revealed that the scaled CNT-based devices, which use graphene contacts, can operate much faster and at much lower supply voltage (0.4 versus 0.7 volts) and with much smaller subthreshold slope (typically 73 millivolts per decade). The 5-nanometer CNT FETs approached the quantum limit of FETs by using only one electron per switching operation. In addition, the contact length of the CNT CMOS devices was also scaled down to 25 nanometers, and a CMOS inverter with a total pitch size of 240 nanometers was also demonstrated.