The distinguished lecture on “Tunnel FETs: Device Physics and Realizations” was held on January 18, 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 15 participants, with 12 IEEE participants and 3 guests.

Prof. Gnani from University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, started with an introduction on some fundamental basics of device technology and it parameters, e.g. scaling rules. Afterwards, she continued with the process evolution over time and where are the scaling roadblocks. Energy, voltage supply and I_off relations followed and principles of FET operation for I_off were presented with the focus on where do improvements impact potential device performance enhancements.

This was the cliffhanger to the Tunnel FET operation principle, where the relation of the exponential behavior of the Fermi function vanishes by the tunneling operation principle. This mainly performs in the linear region/relationship of the Fermi function. Basics and pros and cons of the Tunnel FET followed including an overview on a performance graph of prototypes of Tunnel FETs.

After the presentation and lecture, various questions were asked, e.g. the temperature dependency of Tunnel FETs regarding the band gap variation, which seems to be a second order effect compared to the TAT temperature dependency. Also impacts of Quantum confinement of the Nanowire diameter and device to device variation were discussed, as well as application for automotive.