Designing a low-voltage, high-current tunneling transistor

Tunneling field effect transistors (TFETs) have the potential to achieve a low operating voltage by overcoming the thermally limited sub-threshold swing voltage of 60 mV/dec [1], but results to date have been unsatisfying. The low-voltage operation is parameterized by the voltage required to obtain a 10× change in output current, called the sub-threshold swing voltage, S. The best reported sub-threshold swing voltage has been measured at a low current density of ~1 nA/μm, but unfortunately becomes significantly larger as the current increases. When trying to design a new low-voltage switch to replace the transistor, there are three major requirements to be fulfilled: