Design Insights of Nanosheet FET and CMOS Circuit Applications at 5-nm Technology Node

In this article, FinFET, vertically stacked gate-all-around (GAA) nanowire (NW), and nanosheet (NS) FETs performance are estimated with equal effective channel widths (
${W}_{eff}$
) at the 5-nm technology node (N5). The comparison reveals that NS FET exhibits the highest ON current (
${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}$
), the lowest OFF current (
${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}$
), and the largest
${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}/{I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}}$
ratio with better subthreshold performance. We also explore the geometrical variation of the NS FET toward better dc and analog/RF applications and outlined the necessary design guidelines. Moreover, the robustness of NS FET for temperature variations is also performed and analyzed. Finally, the effect of NS width (
$\text{NS}_{W}$
) on common source (CS) amplifier, CMOS inverter, and ring oscillator circuits is performed by the Verilog-A model in the CADENCE simulator. An increment of 45.11% in oscillation frequency (
$f_{osc}$
), 155.5% rise in CS amplifier gain,
$2.5\times $
increment in energy-delay product (EDP), and marginal reduction in inverter noise margin (NM) is noticed with larger
$\text{NS}_{W}$
. From the result analysis, it is noticed that for sub-5-nm technological nodes, NS FETs exhibit superior performance and ensure fundamental scaling.