Journal of Computational Electronics 1: 289–293, 2002

c 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Can the Density Gradient Approach Describe the Source-Drain Tunnelling

in Decanano Double-Gate MOSFETs?

J.R. WATLING, A.R. BROWN AND A. ASENOV

Device Modelling Group, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow G12 8LT, Scotland, UK
J.Watling@elec.gla.ac.uk

Abstract. As MOSFETs are scaled into the deep sub-micron (decanano) regime, quantum mechanical confinement
and tunnelling start to dramatically affect their characteristics. It has already been demonstrated that the density
gradient approach can be successfully calibrated in respect of vertical quantum confinement at the Si/SiO2 interface
and can reproduce accurately the quantum mechanical threshold voltage shift. In this paper we investigate the extent
to which the density gradient approach can reproduce direct source-drain tunnelling in short double gate MOSFET
devices.

Keywords: simulation, density gradient, tunnelling, double gate MOSFET

1. Introduction manufacturers (Chau 2001). It is, however, common

As MOSFETs are scaled into the deep sub-micron
regime, quantum mechanical (QM) confinement and
tunnelling start to dramatically affect their character-
istics. However, at present, complete quantum sim-
ulations involving, for example, Wigner or Green’s
functions are expensive and therefore not suitable for
inclusion within CAD simulation tools. The common
practice is therefore to introduce economical first-order
quantum corrections into conventional drift-diffusion
simulators. This can be accomplished using the well-
established density gradient (DG) formalism (Ancona
and Iafrate 1989).
In this paper we use a double gate MOSFET with
simple architecture and gate lengths in the range 30
to 6 nm as vehicle for this study. The paper in-
vestigates the extent to which the DG approach can
reproduce the phenomena of source-drain (S-D) tun-
nelling in extremely short devices. Experimental evi-
dence for S-D tunnelling has been observed (Kawaura
et al. 2000) and manifests itself as a degradation of
the subthreshold current slope and anomalous tem-
perature dependence. Properly scaled conventional
MOSFETs with 20 nm channel lengths have al-
ready been demonstrated by leading semiconductor
wisdom that the scaling of the field effect transistor
below this milestone requires intolerably thin gate ox-
ides and unacceptably high channel doping, there-
fore advocating a departure from the conventional
MOSFET concept. One of the most promising new de-
vice structures, scalable to dimensions of 10 nm and be-
low is the double or wrap around gate MOSFET. Thus
it is likely that in these structures direct S-D tunnelling
may become significant. Additionally in a double gate
structure the current is essentially one-dimensional,
making theoretical study and calibration easier than
in a conventional MOSFET device structure.
The next section describes the double gate MOSFET
structure considered in this work. Section 3, describes
the now well-established DG formalism, and to what
extent this approach may include tunnelling. Our re-
sults and evidence for source-drain tunnelling are pre-
sented in Section 4, while Section 5 presents our
conclusion and discussions.
2. Double-Gate Structure
Here we have studied an archetypal double gate
MOSFET structure, similar in design to that by
Ren et al. (2000). We have investigated a family of
290 Watling
Figure 1. Schematic representation of the double-gate MOSFET
structure considered in this work.
double-gate MOSFETs illustrated schematically in
Fig. 1, with channel lengths, L chan , ranging from 30 nm
down to 6 nm, with a width, Wchan , of 30 nm. The
channel thickness, Tchan , and oxide thickness, tox , are
both fixed at 1.5 nm. The source and drain junctions
are 10 nm and doped at 1 × 1020 cm−3 the channel is
lightly doped at 1 × 1016 cm−3 .
It is this lightly doped channel, that makes the dou-
ble gate structure resilient to random dopant fluctua-
tions, which we have studied in another paper (Brown,
Watling and Asenov to be published).
3. Density-Gradient Formalism
The density gradient method may be derived from
the one particle Wigner function (Carruthers and
Zachariasen 1983):
 ← − −→ 
∂ f (k, r, t) 2 h̄ ∇r ∇k
+ v · ∇r f (k, r, t) − V (r) sin
∂t h̄ 2
 
∂ f (k, r, t)
× f (k, r, t) = (1)
∂t coll
Quantum effects are included through the inherently
non-local driving potential in the third term on the
left-hand side. Expanding to first order in h̄, so that
only the first non-local quantum term is considered,
has been shown to be sufficiently accurate to model
non-equilibrium quantum transport and also for the
inclusion of tunnelling phenomena in particle based
Monte Carlo simulators (Tsuchiya and Miyoshi 2000,
Tsuchiya, Fischer and Hess 2000). The additional, non-
classical, quantum correction term may be viewed as a
modification to the classical potential and acts like an
additional quantum force term in the particle simula-
tions, similar in spirit to the Bohm interpretation. In the
case of a tunnelling barrier, the additional term acts to
raise the classical conduction band potential profile to
the left of the barrier and lower the classical potential
barrier, for carriers flowing from left to right.
The density gradient approximation maybe derived
in a manner similar to that for deriving the drift dif-
fusion approximation for the Boltzmann Transport
Equation (Snowden 1989). The classical electronic
equation of state is thus modified so that it includes
an additional term that is dependent on the gradient of
the carrier density:
√  
∇2 n kB T n
2bn √ = φn − ψ + ln (2)
n q ni
where
h̄ 2
bn = .
12 qm ∗n
It remains unclear however, if the approximations re-
quired in deriving the DG approach remove the ability
to be able to model tunnelling phenomena, there stills
remains controversy over whether the DG and other
similar approaches such as effective potential (Ferry,
Akis and Vasileska 2000) can model tunnelling. How-
ever, it is clear that the DG formalism will be unable to
cope with cases where tunnelling is dependent on the
coherent phase behaviour of electrons, as in the case
of resonant tunnelling. We may therefore consider that
DG, if it can account for tunnelling, does so in what
may be termed the scattering-dominated limit (Ancona
2001). Here, we have perform a series of numerical
experiments to see if DG can, at least qualitatively, ac-
count for the impact of source-drain tunnelling on the
subthreshold I D -VG characteristics of very short dou-
ble gate MOSFETs.
4. Results
It has already been demonstrated (Asenov et al. 2001,
Watling et al. 2001) that the DG approach can be suc-
cessfully calibrated in respect of vertical quantum con-
finement at the Si/SiO2 interface and can reproduce
accurately the QM threshold voltage shift by adjusting
the effective mass in the vertical direction. An effec-
tive mass of 0.19m 0 is found to give the best agreement.
Here we investigate through a variety of numerical ex-
periments the extent to which the DG approach repro-
duces at least qualitatively the impact of source-drain
 Density Gradient Approach 291

tunnelling on the I D -VG characteristics and the sub-

threshold slope in short devices and possibly calibrated
by means of the lateral effective mass.
The short channel lengths and channel thickness
means that quantum effects become significant, thus
making the use of classical simulations untrustworthy.
It is therefore mandatory to include quantum correc-
tions, such as through the DG formalism. The signif-
icance of the quantum effects can clearly be seen in
Figs. 2 and 3.
Figures 2 and 3, show the corresponding classical
and quantum charge density profiles respectively, in
the direction normal to the gate, it can be seen that
the quantum distribution tends to zero at the Si/SiO2
interface while the classical distribution peaks at the Figure 4. I D -VG characteristics for a double gate structure, with
gate lengths ranging from 30 nm down to 6 nm, obtained from our
Si/SiO2 interface.
classical and density gradient simulations. VD = 0.01 V and VG is
applied to both top and bottom gate contacts.

The quantum confinement effects in the DG case

leads to a large quantum mechanically threshold volt-
age shift, (∼0.3 V for the 10 nm channel device), shown
in Fig. 4.
Using a constant value (0.19m 0 ) for the effective
mass in all directions, we observe that the subthresh-
old slope in the DG simulations degrades significantly
as the channel length is decreased, while in the classi-
cal simulations the subthreshold slope remains nearly
constant with channel length. For a channel length of
30 nm the classical and DG subthreshold slopes are
almost identical. However, as the gate length is shrunk
down to 10 nm and below the subthreshold slope degra-
Figure 2. Classical electron concentration profile through the cen-
dation in the DG simulations becomes significant as has
tre of a 30 × 30 × 1.5 nm double-gate MOSFET.
been observed by other researchers (Lundstrom 2001).
All of these observations provide an indication that S-D
tunnelling, is included to some extent in the DG simu-
lations.
Further evidence can be gain by looking at the tem-
perature dependence of the subthreshold slope. Clas-
sical MOSFET theory dictates that the classical sub-
threshold slope S is given by Taur and Ning (1998):
 −1  
d(log10 Ids ) kB T Cdm
S= ≈ 2.3 1+ (3)
dV g q Cox

Thus the classical subthreshold slope depends lin-

early on temperature, as we would expect as the clas-
sical subthreshold current is essentially thermionic in
Figure 3. Quantum (density gradient) electron concentration pro- nature, so it has an approximately exponential depen-
file through the centre of a 30 × 30 × 1.5 nm double-gate MOSFET. dence. However, any current due to tunnelling will have
292 Watling
Figure 5. I D -VG characteristics for a 30 nm channel length double
gate structure from classical and density gradient simulations, for a
range of temperatures. VD = 0.01 V and VG is applied to both top
and bottom gate contacts.
Figure 6. I D -VG characteristics for an 8 nm channel length double
gate structure from classical and density gradient simulations, for a
range of temperatures. VD = 0.01 V and VG is applied to both top
and bottom gate contacts.
a much weaker dependence on temperature (Kawaura
et al. 2000). Figures 5 and 6, show the temperature
dependence of the subthreshold slope in both classical
and DG simulations, for channel lengths of 30 nm and
8 nm respectively.
We observe here that the temperature dependence of
the subthreshold slope is similar for both the classical
and DG simulations in the 30 nm gate length device,
in agreement with Eq. (3). The shift in the I D -VG is
the QM threshold voltage shift caused by quantization
in the vertical direction, as illustrated in Figs. 3 and
4. However, for an 8 nm gate length device, there is a
Figure 7. I D -VG characteristics for and 8 nm channel length dou-
ble gate structure obtained from our density gradient simulations, at
300 K for different lateral effective mass. VD = 0.01 V and VG is
applied to both top and bottom gate contacts.
noticeable degradation of the subthreshold slope in the
DG simulations as compared with the classical sim-
ulations, indicating the existence of a second current
transport mechanism in subthreshold region in addi-
tion to the classical over-barrier (thermionic) current.
This is further supported by the observation that in the
DG simulations the subthreshold slope is nearly inde-
pendent of temperature. These observations are again
consistent with the possibility of a source-drain tun-
nelling current, which is less sensitive to temperature
than a thermionic emission current.
All the results presented so far have been of a qual-
itative nature, as we have assumed the same effective
mass in the lateral direction, as in the vertical direc-
tion. However, the lateral effective mass would need
to be calibrated in respect of source-drain tunnelling,
in order to be able to perform quantitative simula-
tions. We have therefore performed simulations, where
we have varied the lateral effective mass, shown in
Fig. 7.
We observe that the increase of the lateral effective
mass results in an increase in the subthreshold slope as
expected since the equation of state in the DG formal-
ism (Eq. (2)) becomes more classical-like in the lateral
direction. There is also a slight shift in the threshold
voltage caused by a mixing affect of the effective mass
in the vertical and lateral directions.
5. Conclusion
We have performed a variety of numerical experiments
to investigate whether the density gradient approach

can model source-drain tunnelling in double gate
MOSFETs in respect of the subthreshold current
characteristics in decanano scale MOSFETs. A vari-
ety of double gate MOSFETs, with channel lengths
ranging from 30 nm to 6 nm have been studied. We
observe that as the channel length is reduced, there is a
corresponding reduction in the subthreshold slope, in
line with the available experimental evidence (Kawaura
et al. 2000). The temperature dependence of the sub-
threshold slope has also been studied, it is observed
that temperature dependence of the 30 nm MOSFET is
in agreement with standard MOSFET theory, while the
subthreshold slope for the 8 nm device is nearly inde-
pendent of temperature, presumably due to the larger
source-drain tunnelling in the smaller device, which is
less temperature sensitive than the classical thermioni-
cally dominated subthreshold current. All of these facts
are in agreement with experimental observations of
direct-source drain tunnelling.
While it remains an open question whether den-
sity gradient can describe quantitatively the tunnelling
phenomena, the series of computational experiments
performed here provide evidence that, at least qualita-
tively, this approach can reproduce the important as-
pects of the I D -VG characteristics that are consistent
with the presence of source-drain tunnelling.
Calibration of the vertical and lateral effective mass,
with respect to both the quantum mechanical thresh-
old voltage shift and source-drain tunnelling, may
make it possible to perform quantitative quantum sim-
ulations, using density gradient. However, this may
be difficult as there is clearly some mixing between
the lateral and vertical masses, as revealed in our
simulations.
Density Gradient Approach 293
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the helpful and useful
discussions with Prof. Mark Lundstrom, Dr. Dejan
Jovanovic, Dr. Mario Ancona and Dr. Anant Anantram.
JRW would like to acknowledge the support of EPSRC
under grant no GR/L53755. SHEFC Research Devel-
opment Grant VIDEOS provided support for ARB.
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