2010/10/19 by N. Clement, N. Clément, K. Nishiguchi +4 · 91 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advancements in Semiconductor Devices and Circuit Design #CMOS #Computer science #Coulomb blockade #Field-effect transistor #Flicker noise #Infrasound #Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor Failure Analysis #MOSFET #Materials science #Nanoscopic scale #Nanotechnology #Nanowire #Noise (video) #Noise figure #Optoelectronics #Physics #Semiconductor materials and devices #Silicon #Transistor #Trap (plumbing) #Voltage #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/ncomms1092
published in Nature Communications 1(1), 92 (Nature Portfolio) · One file with paper and supplementary information
openalex publication_date 2010/10/19 · arxiv created 2010/10/21 · arxiv updated 2010/10/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Flicker or 1/f noise in metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) has been identified as the main source of noise at low frequency. It often originates from an ensemble of a huge number of charges trapping and detrapping. However, a deviation from the well-known model of 1/f noise is observed for nanoscale MOSFETs and a new model is required. Here, we report the observation of one-by-one trap activation controlled by the gate voltage in a nanowire MOSFET and we propose a new low-frequency-noise theory for nanoscale FETs. We demonstrate that the Coulomb repulsion between electronically charged trap sites avoids the activation of several traps simultaneously. This effect induces a noise reduction by more than one order of magnitude. It decreases when increasing the electron density in the channel due to the electrical screening of traps. These findings are technologically useful for any FETs with a short and narrow channel.