A Novel Tunnel FET Design Through Adaptive Bandgap Engineering With Constant Sub-Threshold Slope Over 5 Decades of Current and High I-ON/I-OFF Ratio

In this letter, a novel hetero-stacked TFET (HS-TFET) is experimentally demonstrated and optimized for the first time, which can effectively suppress the subthreshold slope (SS) degradation without leakage current increase through self-adaptively current replenishing with bandgap engineering, greatly alleviating the critical issue of high average SS in conventional TFETs. Based on CMOS-compatible technology, the fabricated HS-TFETs of vertically stacked Si-Si1-xGex source can experimentally achieve superior performance with nearly constant SS over five decades of drain current, high Ion (similar to 14 mu A/mu m @ V-DS = -1 V), and large Ion/Ioff ratio (similar to 10(7)). The proposed device with high process compatibility shows great potentials for future ultra-low power applications.NSFC [61421005, 61604006]; 863 Project [2015AA016501]; China Postdoctoral Science FoundationSCI(E)ARTICLE5540-5433