Investigation on Self-Heating Effect in Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors

Electrothermal modeling of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) field-effect transistor (FET) is performed in this paper, with special attention focused on its self-heating effect. The method of finite difference is implemented for solving a 1-D heat conduction equation in the semiconducting channel self-consistently, and its nonuniform temperature distribution is evaluated for 20-, 32-, and 45-nm technology nodes, respectively. The numerical results are presented to show the self-heating effect on the I-V characteristics, signal delay, and cutoff frequency of the carbon nanotube FET (CNTFET). It is further demonstrated that the maximum temperature rise, as well as the performance degradation of the CNTFET, is quite lower than that of the silicon- based FET counterpart. All these advantages are contributed by the excellent electrothermal properties of the SWCNTs, and they have great potential for the development of active devices with low power dissipation and good reliability at high-operating temperature.