Effect of edge roughness on electronic transport in graphene nanoribbon channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors

Results of quantum mechanical simulations of the influence of edge disorder on transport in graphene nanoribbon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are reported. The addition of edge disorder significantly reduces ON-state currents and increases OFF-state currents, and introduces wide variability across devices. These effects decrease as ribbon widths increase and as edges become smoother. However, the band gap decreases with increasing width, thereby increasing the band-to-band tunneling mediated subthreshold leakage current even with perfect nanoribbons. These results suggest that without atomically precise edge control during fabrication, MOSFET performance gains through use of graphene will be difficult to achieve in complementary MOS applications. (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics.