Nanometer Scale III-V CMOS

In the last few years, as Si electronics faces mounting difficulties to maintain its historical scaling path, transistors based on III-V compound semiconductors have emerged as a credible alternative.  To get to this point, fundamental technical problems had to be solved though there are still many challenges that need to be addressed before the first non-Si CMOS technology becomes a reality.  Among them, harnessing the outstanding electron transport properties of InGaAs, the leading n-channel material candidate, towards a high-performance nanoscale MOSFET has proven difficult; contact resistance, offstate characteristics, reliability and Si integration remain serious problems. Introducing a new material system is not the only challenge.  Scalability to sub-10 nm gate dimensions also demands a new 3D transistor geometry. InGaAs FinFETs, Trigate MOSFETs and Nanowire MOSFETs have all been demonstrated but their performance is still disappointing.  To compound the challenge, a high-performance nanoscale p-type transistor is also required.  Among III-Vs, InGaSb is the most promising candidate.  Planar MOSFETs have been demonstrated but more advanced geometries remain elusive.  This talk will review recent progress as well as challenges confronting III-V electronics for future CMOS logic applications.