Investigation of Sub-10-nm Diameter, Gate-All-Around Nanowire Field-Effect Transistors for Electrostatic Discharge Applications

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) robustness of a promising nanoscaled device, the gate-all-around nanowire field-effect transistor (NW FET), was characterized for the first time using the transmission-line pulsing technique. The effects of gate length, nanowire dimension, and nanowire count on the failure current, leakage current, trigger voltage, and on-resistance were investigated. ESD performances of the gate-all-around NW FET and other nanostructure devices, such as the poly-Si nanowire thin-film transistor and FinFET were also compared and discussed.