Exploiting Fringing Fields Created by High-κ Gate Insulators to Enhance the Performance of Ultrascaled 2-D-Material-Based Transistors

High- κ insulators have allowed MOSFETs to obtain extremely high gate capacitances while still suppressing gate leakage. However, using high- κ gate insulators increases the strength of lateral fringing fields throughout MOSFETs, thus causing fringe-induced barrier lowering (FIBL), an electrostatic short-channel effect. The use of high- κ insulators in place of thin low- κ insulators with the same equivalent oxide thicknesses (EOTs) has, therefore, been associated with a tradeoff between a device's electrostatic control and gate leakage. In this study, we use nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) simulations to demonstrate that FIBL can be exploited to improve the performance of ultrascaled 2-D-material-based MOSFETs by reducing the impact of source-to-drain tunneling currents that are pervasive in extremely scaled MOSFETs, especially at low currents. As a result, we find that MOSFETs with high- κ gate insulators offer improved performances for low-power applications compared to MOSFETs with low- κ gate insulators at identical EOTs, even before considering the effect of gate leakage.