Tuning the tunneling probability by mechanical stress in Schottky barrier based reconfigurable nanowire transistors

Mechanical stress is an established and important tool of the semiconductor industry to improve the performance of modern transistors. It is well understood for the enhancement of carrier mobility but rather unexplored for the control of the tunneling probability for injection dominated research devices based on tunneling phenomena, such as tunnel FETs, resonant tunnel FETs and reconfigurable Schottky FETs. In this work, the effect of stress on the tunneling probability and overall transistor characteristics is studied by three-dimensional device simulations in the example of reconfigurable silicon nanowire Schottky barrier transistors using two independently gated Schottky junctions. To this end, four different stress sources are investigated. The effects of mechanical stress on the average effective tunneling mass and on the multi-valley band structure applying the deformation potential theory are being considered. The transfer characteristics of strained transistors in n- and p-configuration and corresponding charge carrier tunneling are analyzed with respect to the current ratio between electron and hole conduction. For the implementation of these devices into complementary circuits, the mandatory current ratio of unity can be achieved by appropriate mechanical stress either by nanowire oxidation or the application of a stressed top layer. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.