Electrical performance of III-V gate-all-around nanowire transistors

The performance of III-V inversion-mode and junctionless nanowire field-effect transistors are investigated using quantum simulations and are compared with those of silicon devices. We show that at ultrascaled dimensions silicon can offer better electrical performance in terms of short-channel effects and drive current than other materials. This is explained simply by suppression of source-drain tunneling due to the higher effective mass, shorter natural length, and the higher density of states in the confined channel. We also confirm that III-V junctionless nanowire transistors are more immune to short-channel effects than conventional inversion-mode III-V nanowire field-effect transistors. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC