Review Of Compound Semiconductors Relieving Bottlenecks Of Incessant MOSFET Scaling: Heroism Or A Race In The Dark

Abstract

In last five decades, the exponential demand in the field of electronic applications is powered by a drastic escalation in the compactness of silicon based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) field effect transistor (FETs) and qugumentation in logical performance. But silicon based transistor scaling is now heading to its restraints, intimidating to cease the micro-electronics revolution. Another family of semiconductor materials thus have been under surveil- lance that can be rightly placed to handle this problem: Compound Semiconductors. The spectacular electron transport features of such materials might be point of focus that can lead to development of FETs based on such materials in nano-scale regime. This article provides a speculation in the future of compound semiconductor material-based devices with emphasis on effects of incessant scaling. Whilst aggressive scaling, requirements and constraints that include power dissipation, operating frequency, gain, leakage current must be kept balanced with predictive technologies nodes and also with the fabricating aspects of devices. The scaling restraints requisite a transformation from planar architectures to three-dimensional device structures to cater future performance requirements of CMOS nodes beyond 10 nm. Compound semiconductor materials are progressively waged in various electronic, opto-electronic, and photonic applications due to the prospects of adjusting the properties over a broad parameter domain conveniently by tuning the alloy composition. Ironically, the material properties are also willed by the atomic-scale orientation of compound semiconductors in sub-nanometer scale. Compound semiconductors FET based logic circuits perform 5 folds faster than similar topology circuits based on silicon, whilst dissipating only half of the power. Here a comprehensive review is presented that outlines how compound semiconductor materials mitigate various effects of aggressive scaling in nanometer scale and the adjoining effects.

Keywords

• compound semiconductors
• rf performance
• scaling
• field effect transistors
• high electron mobility transistors