Assessing Negative-Capacitance Drain-Extended Technology for High-Voltage Switching and Analog Applications

In this article, we exploit the negative-capacitance (NC) property of ferroelectrics for high-voltage (HV) applications. We present rigorous analysis and new physical insights into the operation of the NC-based MOSFET with a ferroelectric layer in the gate-stack and drain-extended architecture [NC-drain extended metal oxide semiconductor (DEMOS)]. We show that the voltage amplification effect generated by the NC property of the ferroelectric layer boosts the ON-current and transconductance, which can improve the HV switching and analog performance over conventional DEMOS devices. However, several issues ascribed to the drain-extended structure may arise at large ferroelectric thicknesses, including elevated quasi-saturation and impact ionization effects that limit the benefits of NC. We further investigate the switching and analog figures of merit of NC-DEMOS. We show that the NC-DEMOS offers a smaller ON-resistance without any considerable reduction in the breakdown voltage. Moreover, the NC-DEMOS is found to provide a larger analog gain compared with that of the conventional DEMOS, although with a smaller intrinsic cutoff frequency.