Scaling SOI MESFETs to 150-nm CMOS Technologies

Metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs) have been fabricated using a 150-nm partially depleted silicon-on-insulator complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Minimum gate lengths of 150 nm have been achieved, which represents a significant reduction compared with an earlier demonstration using a 350-nm CMOS technology. The scaled MESFETs with L
_g
= 150 nm have a current drive that exceeds 200 mA/mm with a peak f
_T
>; 35 GHz. This is considerably higher than the L
_g
= 400 nm MESFET with a current drive of ~70 mA/mm and a peak f
_T
= 10.6 GHz, which was possible with the earlier generation. However, short-channel effects become significant for L
_g
<; 400 nm, resulting in an optimum MESFET gate length for this technology in the range of 200-300 nm.