The distinguished lecture on “Physics and Modeling of FinFET and Nanosheet Transistors” was held on March 17, 2021.  It was organized by the EDS Germany Chapter and co-sponsored by the NanoP from THM – University of Applied Sciences. The DL was attended by 25 IEEE participants and 18 non IEEE members.

The distinguished lecture of Prof. Chauhan from IIT Kanpur (India), started with an introduction into the basic functional principle of a MOSFET with the key performance parameters. Afterwards, the speaker showed the applied technology boosters of the recent decades, e.g. strained-silicon, high-k metal gate technology, etc. and also the movement from bulk towards FinFET and GAA technologies.

In the main part Prof. Chauhan, one of the main developers of the BSIM models (First industry standard SPICE model for IC simulation), showed the various BSIM models and their validity and comparison to experimental data. A discussion followed regarding the effects captured by the various evolutional BSIM models, e.g. short channel effect, quantum mechanics, temperature effects and geometrical impacts.

A prospective view into the future and the demands of modeling for 10nm and beyond were a hot topic during the presentation. Here, Prof. Chauhan showed examples of different material stacks and upcoming architectures. Among them there was a nanosheet transistor, one of the most promising candidates to replace the FinFET. In this context, especially for structures below 3nm, effects required to be captured more precisely were discussed, as the DoS (Density-of-States) depending on the geometry-related dimensionality (3D to 1D effects).

A discussion on the scaling and modeling of the FinFETs and the nanosheet transistors followed. Here, topics as transport regimes, modeling algorithms, and problems occurring during validation were discussed. Afterwards, Prof. Chauhan offered the new BSIM model, which includes the nanosheet transistor compact model.