Effect of Edge Roughness on Electronic Transport in Graphene Nanoribbon Channel Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors

TL;DR

This study uses quantum simulations to show how edge disorder in graphene nanoribbons impacts MOSFET performance, revealing significant effects on current and leakage that depend on edge quality and ribbon width.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how edge roughness affects electronic transport in graphene nanoribbon MOSFETs, emphasizing the importance of atomically precise edges for optimal device performance.

Findings

Edge disorder reduces ON-state currents.

Edge disorder increases OFF-state currents.

Performance improvements require atomically smooth edges.

Abstract

Results of quantum mechanical simulations of the influence of edge disorder on transport in graphene nanoribbon metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are reported. The addition of edge disorder significantly reduces ON-state currents and increases OFF-state currents, and introduces wide variability across devices. These effects decrease as ribbon widths increase and as edges become smoother. However the bandgap decreases with increasing width, thereby increasing the band-to-band tunneling mediated subthreshold leakage current even with perfect nanoribbons. These results suggest that without atomically precise edge control during fabrication, MOSFET performance gains through use of graphene will be difficult to achieve.