Record RF performance of sub-46 nm L/sub gate/ NFETs in microprocessor SOI CMOS technologies

Abstract

We report record RF FET performance in 65 and 90-nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS technologies featuring measured gate lengths from 27 to 43 nm and analyze factors contributing to that performance. The effect of layout and geometry optimization as well as channel length scaling is investigated to improve RF performance, namely fT, and fMAX. A peak fT of 330 GHz is measured in a fully-wired 65-nm NFET. A complete de-embedding method to accurately determine RF characteristics of the intrinsic 90-nm SOI NFET results in a peak fT of 290 GHz and an fMAX of 450 GHz