Self-consistent modeling of longitudinal quantum effects in nanoscale double-gate metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors

Ultrathin double-gate silicon-on-insulator transistors are studied in the quantum coherent limit. By treating electron-electron interaction on the level of a mean field approach, the density matrix of the device becomes diagonal when expressed in a basis that results from imposing scattering boundary conditions at the terminals. The self-consistent scattering wave functions are computed using a multisubband scattering matrix formalism. This allows us to retain the full dimensionality of the wave functions and eliminates the need for the adiabatic decomposition of the Schrodinger equation. Subband mixing is fully taken into account and a piecewise analytical representation of the wave functions can significantly reduce the number of sampling positions along transport direction. By self-consistent simulations the size of source-to-drain tunneling as a function of gate length is demonstrated for different body thicknesses. A strong forward bias is shown to increase the tunnel current due to the thinning of the source-drain potential barrier. The effect of channel orientation on the tunnel current is also discussed. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.