Impact of Super-Linear Onset, Off-Region Due to Uni-Directional Conductance and Dominant on Performance of TFET-Based Circuits

This paper investigates the consequences of several distinctive device characteristics of tunnel FETs (TFET), namely super-linear onset, uni-directional conduction, and the dominant gate-drain capacitance, regarding the energy consumption, propagation delay, and noise resilience. Simulations have shown that these TFET specific characteristics have a detrimental effect on the dynamic response. We also report that their impact remains significant when operating voltage is scaled. Thus device level optimizations are required to eliminate these attributes to take full advantage of TFETs small subthreshold swing and low voltage operation.