Mass Production of Silicon MOS-SETs: Can We Live with Nano-Devices’ Variability?

It is very important to study variability of nanodevices because the inability to produce large amounts of identical nanostructures is eventually a bottleneck for any application. In fact variability is already a major concern for CMOS circuits. In this work we report on the variability of dozens of silicon single-electron transistors (SETs). At room temperature their variability is compared with the variability of the most advanced CMOS FET i.e. the ultra thin Silicon-on-Insulator Multiple gate FET (UT SOI MuGFET). We found that dopants diffused from Source –Drain into the edge of the undoped channel are the main source of variability. This emphasizes the role of extrinsic factors like the contact junctions for variability of any nanodevice.