Boosting the performance of a nanoscale graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor using graded gate engineering

In this paper, we report the device performance of a new graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor (GNRFET) with a linearly graded binary metal alloy gate through a quantum simulation study. The proposed device is simulated by solving the Schrödinger equation using the mode space non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) formalism coupled self-consistently with a two-dimensional Poisson equation in the ballistic limit. Comparisons are made for the I–V characteristics, subthreshold swing, voltage gain, and cut-off frequency among conventional GNRFETs and work-function-engineered gate GNRFETs. Moreover, the impact of variation in GNR channel length on device performance is also studied. We have found that the GNRFET endowed with work-function-engineered gate can improve the subthreshold swing and provide higher voltage gain and cut-off frequency than the conventional GNRFET. The obtained results indicate that the proposed device can alleviate the critical problem and further improve immunity against short channel effects of nanoscale GNRFETs for high performance analog sub-10-nm technology.