Reconfigurable single-walled carbon nanotube ferroelectric field-effect transistors

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Nanotechnology

Background:

• Conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology faces scaling limitations.
• Existing reconfigurable devices often require continuous voltage, negating power efficiency benefits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop scalable reconfigurable devices overcoming limitations of current technologies.
• To demonstrate a new approach for compact and power-efficient integrated circuits.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of single-gate field-effect transistors using highly aligned single-walled carbon nanotube channels.
• Integration with a ferroelectric aluminum scandium nitride gate dielectric for reconfigurability.

Main Results:

• Devices exhibit ambipolar characteristics with high on-state currents (~270 μA μm^-1) and on/off ratios >10⁵.
• Demonstrated large memory windows and excellent retention behavior.
• Ferroelectric polarization switching enabled reconfiguration between p- and n-channel operation.

Conclusions:

• The developed devices offer a pathway to highly compact and power-efficient integrated circuits.
• Ternary content-addressable memory realized with significantly fewer components than conventional or alternative technologies.