Quantum Mechanical Study on Tunnelling and Ballistic Transport of Nanometer Si MOSFETs

Using self-consistent calculations of million-atom Schrödinger-Poisson equations, we investigate the I–V characteristics of tunnelling and ballistic transport of nanometer metal oxide semiconductor held effect transistors (MOSFET) based on a full 3-D quantum mechanical simulation under nonequilibtium condition. Atomistic empirical pseudopotentials are used to describe the device Hamiltonian and the underlying bulk band structure. We find that the ballistic transport dominates the I–V characteristics, whereas the effects of tunnelling cannot be neglected with the maximal value up to 0.8 mA/μm when the channel length of MOSFET scales down to 25 nm. The effects of tunnelling transport lower the threshold voltage Vt. The ballistic current based on fully 3-D quantum mechanical simulation is relatively large and has small on-off ratio compared with results derived from the calculation methods of Luo et al