Performance Enhancement of Tunnel Field-Effect Transistors by Synthetic Electric Field Effect

In this letter, we propose a synthetic electric field (SE) effect to enhance the performance of tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs). The novel SE-TFET architecture utilizes both horizontal and vertical electric fields induced by a gate electrode that is wrapped around an ultrathin epitaxial channel. The drain current of the SE-TFET is increased up to 100 times in comparison with those of conventional TFETs. The subthreshold slope of the SE-TFET also improved, and enhanced to 52 mV/decade by scaling the channel width and channel thickness.