Cryogenic Operation of Thin-Film FDSOI nMOS Transistors: The Effect of Back Bias on Drain Current and Transconductance

In this article, we have studied the drain current and transconductance of nMOS fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) transistors operating at low temperature (typically < 20 K) when back gate is forward biased. Humps appear in the current, leading to oscillations of the transconductance with gate voltage, owing to mobility discontinuity due to intersubband scattering, in relation with the 2-D subband structure. The conditions for which these specific features appear in thin-film silicon-on-insulator (SOI) devices have been analyzed, by varying the temperature, drain voltage, silicon channel thickness, and gate length.