Investigation of Low-Frequency Noise in Silicon Nanowire MOSFETs

Low-frequency noise (LFN) in n-type silicon nanowire MOSFETs (SNWTs) is investigated in this letter. The drain-current spectral density exhibits significant dispersion of up to five orders of magnitude due to the ultrasmall dimensions of SNWTs. The measured results show that LFN in SNWTs can be well described by the correlated-mobility fluctuation model at low drain current, with the effective oxide trap density extracted and discussed. At high drain current, however, the input-referred noise spectral density increases rapidly with the drain current, which indicates the significant impact of the ultranarrow source/drain extension regions of SNWTs. As a result, design optimizations to reduce the impact of parasitic resistance in SNWTs are necessary for analog/RF applications.