Harmonic Distortion of Unstrained and Strained FinFETs Operating in Saturation

The harmonic distortion (HD) exhibited by unstrained and biaxially strained fin-shaped field-effect transistors operating in saturation as single-transistor amplifiers has been investigated for devices with different channel lengths
L
and fin widths
W
_fin
. The study has been performed through device characterization, 3-D device simulations, and modeling. Nonlinearity has been evaluated in terms of second- and third-order HDs (HD2 and HD3, respectively), and a discussion on its physical sources has been carried out. Also, the influence of the open-loop voltage gain
AV
in HD has been observed.