Abstract: Employing the quantum transmitting boundary (QTB) method, we have developed a two-dimensional Schrödinger-Poisson solver in order to investigate quantum transport in nano-scale CMOS transistors subjected to open boundary conditions. In this paper we briefly describe the building blocks of the solver that was originally written to model silicon devices. Next, we explain how to extend the code to semiconducting materials such as germanium, having conduction bands with energy ellipsoids that are neither parallel nor perpendicular to the channel interfaces or even to each other. The latter introduces mixed derivatives in the 2D effective mass equation, thereby heavily complicating the implementation of open boundary conditions. We present a generalized quantum transmitting boundary method that mainly leans on the completeness of the eigenstates of the effective mass equation. Finally, we propose a new algorithm to calculate the chemical potentials of the source and drain reservoirs, taking into account their mutual interaction at high drain voltages. As an illustration, we present the potential and carrier density profiles obtained for a (111) Ge NMOS transistor as well as the ballistic current characteristics.

Abstract: A semianalytical model of the through-silicon via (TSV) capacitance for elevated operating temperatures is derived and verified with electrical measurements. The effect of temperature on the increase in TSV capacitance over different technology parameters is explored, and it is shown that higher oxide thickness reduces the impact of temperature rise on TSV capacitance, while with low doped substrates, which are instrumental for reducing the TSV capacitance, the sensitivity of TSV capacitance to temperature is large and cannot be ignored.

Abstract: We show that bulk semiconductor materials do not allow perfectly complementary p- and n-channel tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs), due to the presence of a heavy-hole band. When tunneling in p-TFETs is oriented towards the gate-dielectric, field-induced quantum confinement results in a highest-energy subband which is heavy-hole like. In direct-bandgap IIIV materials, the most promising TFET materials, phonon-assisted tunneling to this subband degrades the subthreshold swing and leads to at least 10x smaller on-current than the desired ballistic on-current. This is demonstrated with quantum-mechanical predictions for p-TFETs with tunneling orthogonal to the gate, made out of InP, In0.53Ga0.47As, InAs, and a modified version of In0.53Ga0.47As with an artificially increased conduction-band density-of-states. We further show that even if the phonon-assisted current would be negligible, the build-up of a heavy-hole-based inversion layer prevents efficient ballistic tunneling, especially at low supply voltages. For p-TFET, a strongly confined n-i-p or n-p-i-p configuration is therefore recommended, as well as a tensily strained line-tunneling configuration. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Abstract: Using Hubbard-U-corrected density functional theory calculations, lattice Monte Carlo simulations, and spin Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the impact of dopant clustering on the magnetic properties of WSe2 doped with period four transition metals. We use manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe) as candidate n-type dopants and vanadium (V) as the candidate p-type dopant, substituting the tungsten (W) atom in WSe2. Specifically, we determine the strength of the exchange interaction in Fe-, Mn-, and V-doped WSe2 in the presence of clustering. We show that the clusters of dopants are energetically more stable than discretely doped systems. Further, we show that in the presence of dopant clustering, the magnetic exchange interaction significantly reduces because the magnetic order in clustered WSe2 becomes more itinerant. Finally, we show that the clustering of the dopant atoms has a detrimental effect on the magnetic interaction, and to obtain an optimal Curie temperature, it is important to control the distribution of the dopant atoms.

Abstract: The envelope function method traditionally employs a single basis set which, in practice, relates to a single material because the k.p matrix elements are generally only known in a particular basis. In this work, we defined a basis function transformation to alleviate this restriction. The transformation is completely described by the known inter-band momentum matrix elements. The resulting envelope function equation can solve the electronic structure in lattice matched heterostructures without resorting to boundary conditions at the interface between materials, while all unit-cell averaged observables can be calculated as with the standard envelope function formalism. In the case of two coupled bands, this heterostructure formalism is equivalent to the standard formalism while taking position dependent matrix elements. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Abstract: In this study we investigate the effect of device topology on the ballistic current in n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. Comparison of the nanoscale planar and double-gate devices reveals that, down to a certain thickness of the double gate film, the ballistic current flowing in the double gate device is twice as large compared to its planar counterpart. On the other hand, further thinning of the film beyond this threshold is found to change noticeably the confinement and transport characteristics, which are strongly depending on the film material and the surface orientation. For double gate Ge and Si devices there exists a critical film thickness below which the transverse gate field is no longer effectively screened by the inversion layer electron gas and mutual inversion of the two gates is turned on. In the case of GaAs and other similar IIIV compounds, a decrease in the film thickness may drastically change the occupation of the L-valleys and therefore amend the transport properties. The simulation results show that, in both cases, the ballistic current and the transconductance are considerably enhanced.

Abstract: The effects of thermal annealing in inert Ar gas atmosphere of SiO2-supported, exfoliated single-layer graphene are investigated in this work. A systematic, reproducible change in the electronic properties of graphene is observed after annealing. The most prominent Raman features in graphene, the G and 2D peaks, change in accord to what is expected in the case of hole doping. The results of electrical characterization performed on annealed, back-gated field-effect graphene devices show that the neutrality point voltage VNP increases monotonically with the annealing temperature, confirming the occurrence of excess hole accumulation. No degradation of the structural properties of graphene is observed after annealing at temperatures as high as 400 °C. Thermal annealing of single-layer graphene in controlled Ar atmosphere can therefore be considered a technique to reproducibly modify the electronic structure of graphene by tuning its Fermi level.

Abstract: A spin wave majority fork-like structure with feature size of 40 nm, is presented and investigated, through micromagnetic simulations. The structure consists of three merging out-of-plane magnetization spin wave buses and four magneto-electric cells serving as three inputs and an output. The information of the logic signals is encoded in the phase of the transmitted spin waves and subsequently stored as direction of magnetization of the magneto-electric cells upon detection. The minimum dimensions of the structure that produce an operational majority gate are identified. For all input combinations, the detection scheme employed manages to capture the majority phase result of the spin wave interference and ignore all reflection effects induced by the geometry of the structure. (C) 2017 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract: Recent years have seen a tremendous rise of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials, several of which were verified experimentally. However, most of the theoretical predictions to date rely on ab initio methods, at zero temperature and fluctuation-free, while one certainly expects detrimental quantum fluctuations at finite temperatures. Here, we present the solution of the quantum Heisenberg model for honeycomb/hexagonal lattices with anisotropic exchange interaction up to third nearest neighbors and in an applied field in arbitrary direction, which answers the question whether long-range magnetization can indeed survive in the ultrathin limit of materials, up to which temperature, and what the characteristic excitation (magnon) frequencies are, all essential to envisaged applications of magnetic 2D materials. We find that long-range magnetic order persists at finite temperature for materials with overall easy-axis anisotropy. We validate the calculations on the examples of monolayers CrI3, CrBr3, and MnSe2. Moreover, we provide an easy-to-use tool to calculate Curie temperatures of new 2D computational materials.

Abstract: We study the resistivity scaling in nanometer-sized metallic wires due to surface roughness and grain-boundaries, currently the main cause of electron scattering in nanoscaled interconnects. The resistivity has been obtained with the Boltzmann transport equation, adopting the relaxation time approximation of the distribution function and the effective mass approximation for the conducting electrons. The relaxation times are calculated exactly, using Fermi's golden rule, resulting in a correct relaxation time for every sub-band state contributing to the transport. In general, the relaxation time strongly depends on the sub-band state, something that remained unclear with the methods of previous work. The resistivity scaling is obtained for different roughness and grain-boundary properties, showing large differences in scaling behavior and relaxation times. Our model clearly indicates that the resistivity is dominated by grain-boundary scattering, easily surpassing the surface roughness contribution by a factor of 10. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Abstract: Switching induced by spin-orbit torque (SOT) is being vigorously explored, as it allows the control of magnetization using an in-plane current, which enables a three-terminal magnetic-tunnel-junction geometry with isolated read and write paths. This significantly improves the device endurance and the read stability, and allows reliable subnanosecond switching. Tungsten in the beta phase, beta-W, has the largest reported antidamping SOT charge-to-spin conversion ratio (theta(AD) approximate to -60%) for heavy metals. However, beta-W has a limitation when one is aiming for reliable technology integration: the beta phase is limited to a thickness of a few nanometers and enters the alpha phase above 4 nm in our samples when industry-relevant deposition tools are used. Here, we report our approach to extending the range of beta-W, while simultaneously improving the SOT efficiency by introducing N and O doping of W. Resistivity and XRD measurements confirm the extension of the beta phase from 4 nm to more than 10 nm, and transport characterization shows an effective SOT efficiency larger than -44.4% (reaching approximately -60% for the bulk contribution). In addition, we demonstrate the possibility of controlling and enhancing the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy of a storage layer (Co-Fe-B). Further, we integrate the optimized W(O, N) into SOT magnetic random-access memory (SOT-MRAM) devices and project that, for the same thickness of SOT material, the switching current decreases by 25% in optimized W(O, N) compared with our standard W. Our results open the path to using and further optimizing W for integration of SOT-MRAM technology.

Abstract: Graphene interconnects are being considered as a promising candidate for beyond CMOS applications, thanks to the intrinsic higher carrier mobility, lower aspect ratio and better reliability with respect to conventional Cu damascene interconnects. However, similarly to Cu, line edge roughness can seriously affect graphene resistance, something which must be taken into account when evaluating the related performance benefits. In this letter, we present a model for assessing the impact of edge scattering on the resistance of graphene interconnects. Our model allows the evaluation of the total mean free path in graphene lines as a function of graphene width, diffusive scattering probability and edge roughness standard deviation and autocorrelation length. We compare our model with other models from literature by benchmarking them using the same set of experimental data. We show that, as opposed to the considered models from literature, our model is capable to describe the mobility drop with scaling caused by significantly rough edges.

Abstract: We present comprehensive calculations of the low-field hole mobility in Ge p-channel inversion layers with SiO2 insulator using a six-band k·p band-structure model. The cases of relaxed, biaxially, and uniaxially (both tensily and compressively) strained Ge are studied employing an efficient self-consistent methodmaking use of a nonuniform spatial mesh and of the Broyden second methodto solve the coupled envelope-wave function k·p and Poisson equations. The hole mobility is computed using the KuboGreenwood formalism accounting for nonpolar hole-phonon scattering and scattering with interfacial roughness. Different approximations to handle dielectric screening are also investigated. As our main result, we find a large enhancement (up to a factor of 10 with respect to Si) of the mobility in the case of uniaxial compressive stress similarly to the well-known case of Si. Comparison with experimental data shows overall qualitative agreement but with significant deviations due mainly to the unknown morphology of the rough Ge-insulator interface, to additional scattering with surface optical phonon from the high- insulator, to Coulomb scattering interface traps or oxide chargesignored in our calculationsand to different channel structures employed.

Abstract: To improve the interpretation of the tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) measurements, we theoretically identify the signatures of the ballistic band-tail (BT) tunneling (BTT) current in the transfer and output characteristics of the TFETs. In particular, we demonstrate that the temperature dependence of a BTT-dominated subthreshold swing (SS) is in agreement with the reported experimental results. We explain how the temperature dependence of the output characteristics can be used to distinguish between a current dominated by BTT and a current dominated by trap-assisted tunneling. Finally, we propose an expression that relates the energetic extension of the quasi-extended BT states in the bandgap to the onset voltage for tunneling.