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Sub-5 nm Monolayer AlN MOSFETs Performance Limit
W. A. Abdul-Hussein, Falah H. Hanoon and Lafy F. Al‑Badry

Constantly examining novel alternative materials to improve devices performance is a pressing issue in light of the scaling constraints of silicon-based metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). Two-dimensional (2D) aluminum nitride (AlN) with constancy under ambient settings is a suitable channel material for the next MOSFET era. Using an ab-initio quantum-transport approach, the performance of n-type sub-5 nm devices built from a monolayer (ML) 2D AlN was studied. We found the double-gated (DG) ML AlN MOSFETs with an appropriate underlap region (UL) can meet the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) targets for 2028. Remarkably, the high-performance (HP) and low-power (LP) ML AlN MOSFET devices have high on-state currents (^Ion) and perform up until gate lengths (^Lg) of 2 and 3 nm, respectively. Additionally, ML AlN MOSFETs are competitive when compared to other 2D MOSFETs in terms of ^Ion, subthreshold swing (^SS), delay time (^τ), and Power dissipation (PDP). Therefore, Moore’s law could be stretched to a sub-5 nm range with AlN channel materials.

Keywords: Quantum transport; density functional theory; 2-dimensional systems; sub-5 nm field effect transistor; Aluminum nitride, ab initio simulations.