Potential Enhancement of f_T and gₘf_T/I_D via the Use of NCFETs to Mitigate the Impact of Extrinsic Parasitics

The potential for negative-capacitance field-effect transistors (NCFETs) to enhance the unity-current-gain cutoff frequency ${f}_{T}$ and ${g}_{m}{f}_{T}/{I}_{D}$ ratio through a technique that mitigates the impacts of extrinsic parasitic capacitances is investigated, where ${g}_{m}$ is the transconductance and ${I}_{D}$ is the dc drain current and where “extrinsic” refers to elements arising outside an “intrinsic” or core transistor structure. We explain the technique and show that NCFETs can provide significant gains in extrinsic ${f}_{T}$ and ${g}_{m}{f}_{T}/{I}_{D}$ from this mitigation effect. However, an inherent degradation of intrinsic ${f}_{T}$ needs to be addressed to maximize these benefits, and this degradation can be alleviated through channel-length scaling as well as supply- and threshold-voltage tuning. The relative influences of different extrinsic parasitic elements are also evaluated, and it is found that improvements to ${f}_{T}$ and ${g}_{m}{f}_{T}/{I}_{D}$ increase as extrinsic parasitic capacitance increases and decrease as extrinsic parasitic resistance increases. Overall, this work finds that NCFET structures are promising candidates to mitigate the impacts of extrinsic parasitics in aggressively scaled transistors for the next-generation RF applications.