Impact of Semiconductor Permittivity Reduction on Electrical Characteristics of Nanoscale MOSFETs

The dielectric screening property of a semiconductor is very crucial for the electrical characteristics of a MOSFET, and which can be described mathematically by Poisson equation via the permittivity. While the theory and experiments have corroborated the permittivity reduction of nanoscale Si, this paper studies the electrical characteristics of MOSFETs considering the reduced channel permittivity by quantum transport simulations. It is found that the channel permittivity reduction may mitigate the short-channel effects, showing subthreshold swing improvement and threshold voltage shift of MOSFETs in nanoscale. Compared to quantization effects, the positive and negative impacts of the channel permittivity reduction on the devices in particularly nanoscale have been investigated. This paper elucidates the necessity of considering semiconductor permittivity reduction for nanoscale device design and simulations.