Electrical properties of nanometer-scale MOSFETs

We report the observation of electrical transport in nanometer-scale silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). To investigate their electrical properties, we used electrically variable shallow junction MOSFETs (EJ-MOSFETs). Using 10-nm-level lithographic technique, we succeeded in fabricating an 8-nm-long gate. This device enabled us to clearly observe the tunneling current from the source to the drain (source-drain tunneling current). Based on the experimental results and calculation, we showed that source-drain tunneling dominates electrical transport below 6 nm. This result indicates that source-drain tunneling limits the miniaturization of MOSFETs to around 5 run.