Sub-5 nm Gate Length Selenium Nanowire Transistors: Implications for Nanoelectronics

Semiconductors with low dimensions have been presented when field-effect transistors (FETs) using silicon as a channel material approach their limits related to scale. Recently, 5 μm gate length selenium nanosheet FETs have been experimentally fabricated. An approach called ab initio quantum transport is implemented in this work to investigate the efficiency of sub-5 nm gate length gate-all-around (GAA) selenium nanowire FETs. The performances of the sub-5 nm gate length n-type GAA selenium nanowire FETs are superior to those of the p-type ones. Given the negative capacitance technology and underlap, the efficiency of 1 nm gate length n-type GAA selenium nanowire FETs could meet the benchmarks of the 2013 ITRS concerning usage related to high performance (HP) and low power (LP) in the perspective of 2028. Therefore, selenium nanowires are a suitable channel material of FETs that can extend Moore’s law to 1 nm, making ultrashort selenium nanowires applicable for nanoelectronics.