Improving the RF Performance of Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor

Compact model of single-walled semiconducting carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNTFETs) implementing the calculation of energy conduction subband minima under VHDLAMS simulator is used to explore the high-frequency performance potential of CNTFET. The cutoff frequency expected for a MOSFET-like CNTFET is well below the performance limit, due to the large parasitic capacitance between electrodes. We show that using an array of parallel nanotubes as the transistor channel combined in a finger geometry to produce a single transistor significantly reduces the parasitic capacitance per tube and, thereby, improves high-frequency performance.