Design Optimization of Back-Gated Thin-Body Silicon-on-Insulator Capacitorless Dynamic Random Access Memory Cell

Highly scaled (22 nm-node) capacitorless single-transistor dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cell design is investigated via technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulations. It is found that the gate-sidewall spacer width and operating voltages can be adjusted to reduce band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) and thereby increase data retention time for bipolar junction transistor (BJT)-based operation. Read current variations due to random dopant fluctuations (RDF) are investigated via three-dimensional Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations. It is found that BJT-based operation is more robust to RDF effects than metal--oxide--semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET)-based operation.