Impact of High-Mobility Materials on the Performance of Near- and Sub-Threshold CMOS Logic Circuits

Author

Crupi, Felice ; Albano, Domenico ; Alioto, Massimo ; Franco, Jacopo ; Selmi, Luca ; Mitard, J. ; Groeseneken, Guido

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Ing. Inf., Modellistica, Elettron. e Sist., Univ. della Calabria, Rende, Italy

Volume

60

Issue

3

fYear

2013

fDate

Mar-13

Firstpage

972

Lastpage

977

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of high-mobility materials on the performance and energy efficiency of near- and sub-threshold CMOS logic circuits by means of analytical equations and experimental data on SiGe pMOSFETs. The introduction of high-mobility materials is shown to improve the energy-performance trade-off in near-threshold circuits more than in above-threshold circuits, since the benefits of higher mobility are degraded at higher longitudinal and transversal electric fields. On the other hand, results show that high-mobility materials do not exhibit any advantage in terms of the energy-performance trade-off in sub-threshold logic circuits. This is explained by the fact that the benefits brought by the larger mobility of SiGe or other alternative materials can be obtained by tuning the threshold voltage of conventional Si devices.

Keywords

CMOS logic circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MOSFET; semiconductor materials; Si-Ge; energy efficiency; high-mobility material impact; longitudinal electric field; near-threshold CMOS logic circuits; silicon devices; silicon-germanium pMOSFET; sub-threshold CMOS logic circuits; threshold voltage tuning; transversal electric field; CMOS integrated circuits; Logic gates; MOSFETs; Silicon; Silicon germanium; Very large scale integration; High-mobility materials; SiGe pMOSFETs; near-threshold CMOS circuits; sub-threshold CMOS circuits;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2013.2240685

Filename

6457444