Graphene Klein tunnel transistors for high speed analog RF applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces Graphene Klein tunnel transistors (GKTFETs) that leverage Klein tunneling in graphene to achieve high-speed RF performance with current saturation, high transconductance, and significantly improved cutoff frequencies over GFETs.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel GKTFET design utilizing angled graphene p-n junctions and Klein tunneling to enhance RF performance and current saturation, surpassing existing GFET capabilities.

Findings

GKTFETs exhibit higher $f_T$ and $f_{max}$ than GFETs for the same channel length.

Estimated $f_{max}$ reaches 17 GHz for 1 μm channels and 53 GHz for 100 nm channels.

GKTFETs show potential for high-speed analog RF applications with improved output resistance.

Abstract

We propose Graphene Klein tunnel transistors (GKTFET) as a way to enforce current saturation while maintaining large mobility for high speed radio frequency (RF) applications. The GKTFET consists of a sequence of angled graphene p-n junctions (GPNJs). Klein tunneling creates a collimation of electrons across each GPNJ, so that the lack of substantial overlap between transmission lobes across successive junctions creates a gate-tunable transport gap without significantly compromising the on-current. Electron scattering at the device edge tends to bleed parasitic states into the gap, but the resulting pseudogap is still sufficient to create a saturated output ($I_D-V_D$) characteristic and a high output resistance. The modulated density of states generates a higher transconductance ($g_m$) and unity current gain cut-off frequency ($f_T$) than GFETs. More significantly the high output resistance makes the unity power gain cut-off frequency ($f_{max}$) of GKTFETs considerably larger than GFETs, making analog GKTFET potentially useful for RF electronics. Our estimation shows the $f_T$/$f_{max}$ of a GKTFET with 1 $\mu$m channel reaches 33 GHz/17 GHz, and scale up to 350 GHz/53 GHz for 100 nm channel (assuming a single, scalable trapezoidal gate). The $f_{max}$ of a GKTFET is 10 times higher than a GFET with the same channel length.