An improved subthreshold swing expression accounting for back-gate bias in FDSOI FETs

In a MOSFET transistor, the subthreshold swing defines the switching efficiency, and the associated slope factor, or so-called body factor, is a critical parameter in charge-based models. However, in an advanced Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FDSOI) process, the slope factor is influenced by a strong back gate coupling due to a thin buried oxide (BOX). A conventional constant expression can not describe the slope factor at various back-gate voltages. Therefore, this paper proposes a general slope factor expression for front- and back-gate transfer characteristics of long-channel FDSOI MOSFETs in a strong gate coupling. The proposed expression is a continuous function of the surface potential difference between the front and back sides, which explains the slope factor behavior versus the back-gate voltage. Besides, the systematic study is presented for the front/back interface states. The proposed model is applied to evaluate the down-scaling of FDSOI technologies in terms of the gate-coupled slope factor. The scaling in the buried oxide layer degrades the front slope factor, which a thinner channel or a reverse body bias can compensate for at the cost of a higher vertical electric field. Compared to the SiO2, the application of high-κ dielectric for the buried oxide layer shows a better stand to the degraded slope factor by the interface states.