Molecular Beam Epitaxy

8Molecular Beam Epitaxy for Steep Switching Tunnel FETs

Salim El Kazzi

IMEC, Leuven, 3001, Belgium

8.1 Introduction

The advent of 5G communications and the convergence with the Internet of Things (IoT) require next‐generation energy‐efficient devices which can integrate into our daily life. From autonomous cars to drones, entertainment, defense technologies, health services and low‐power pervasive radio frequency (RF) communication, technology enablers incorporating large‐scale‐integration chips with extremely low power consumption are in huge need [1]. At the transistor level, one of the main requirements is to achieve very steep devices operating at supply voltages (V_dd) less than 0.5 V. Therefore, tunneling field effect transistors (TFETs) are being explored as the most promising devices which can answer this demand and help in reducing power consumption and boosting performance [2,3].

In this chapter, we try to show the importance of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as an ideal technique for making next‐generation low‐power tunneling devices. We start with a brief introduction of the TFET working principle and its main advantage over the traditional metal–oxide–semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET). Then, we show how III–V properties and their capability to offer different band alignments make them promising alternatives to Si in TFETs. After showing an example of an ideal MBE production cluster for complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology, we discuss the ...