Investigating the impact of quantum confinement on the THz behavior of Nanoscale FinFETs.

The stationary and transient behavior of a 3 nm wide on-insulator type FinFET is investigated. The focus is laid on the evaluation and characterization of the effect of quantum confinement on the amplifier behavior. The high computational burden related to the time-resolved analysis of such three-dimensional simulations is dealt with by applying a mode-space approach onto a Quantum Liouville-type Equation. It is shown that the diagonal coupling terms related to the mode-space approach should be taken into consideration for the analysis of FinFETs. An increase in gain compression and higher order harmonic distortion is observed, when the fin height is decreased and, therefore, stronger quantum confinement occurs. The 1 dB compression point is shown to decrease by as much as 8 dB when reducing the fin height from 7 to 3 nm. • A coupled mode-space approach is applied onto a Liouville-type equation. • The new algorithm enables efficient transient analysis of Multigate-FETs. • Here, nonlinear behavior in nanoscale FinFETs is investigated in the time-domain. • Gain compression is shown to increase when reducing the channel size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]