Nanospike electrodes and charge nanoribbons: A new design for nanoscale thin-film transistors

Kelly Liang; Xin Xu; Yuchen Zhou; Xiao Wang; Calla M McCulley; Liang Wang; Jaydeep Kulkarni; Ananth Dodabalapur

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abm1154

Nanospike electrodes and charge nanoribbons: A new design for nanoscale thin-film transistors

Sci Adv. 2022 Jan 28;8(4):eabm1154. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abm1154. Epub 2022 Jan 28.

Authors

Kelly Liang^{1

2}, Xin Xu¹, Yuchen Zhou^{1

2}, Xiao Wang^{1

2}, Calla M McCulley^{1

3}, Liang Wang¹, Jaydeep Kulkarni², Ananth Dodabalapur^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Microelectronics Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78758, USA.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
³ Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin at Austin, Austin, TX 78758, USA.

Abstract

To scale down thin-film transistor (TFT) channel lengths for accessing higher levels of speed and performance, a redesign of the basic device structure is necessary. With nanospike-shaped electrodes, field-emission effects can be used to assist charge injection from the electrodes in sub-200-nm channel length amorphous oxide and organic TFTs. These designs result in the formation of charge nanoribbons at low gate biases that greatly improve subthreshold and turn-off characteristics. A design paradigm in which the gate electric field can be less than the source-drain field is proposed and demonstrated. By combining small channel lengths and thick gate dielectrics, this approach is also shown to be a promising solution for boosting TFT performance through charge focusing and charge nanoribbon formation in flexible/printed electronics applications.