IET Circuits, Devices & Systems

Research Article

Impact of source/drain doping concentration

on graphene nanoribbon field effect
transistor performance

ISSN 1751-858X
Received on 25th April 2016
Revised on 27th June 2016
Accepted on 15th July 2016
doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2016.0094
www.ietdl.org

Jasleen Kaur, Anita Kumari

School of Electronic Engineering, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, India
E-mail: anita.k07@gmail.com

Abstract: Graphene nanoribbon field effect transistor is considered as a next-generation device. In this study, effect on
device performance parameters such as on and off state currents, cut-off frequency, delay and transconductance at
different source and drain (S/D) doping concentrations is investigated. It is observed that changing the S/D doping
concentrations has an impact on band-to-band tunnelling which affects the device performance. This study also reveals
that the minimum conductivity point, i.e. Dirac point decreases with increase in doping concentration. The obtained
results are based on non-equilibrium Greens function formalism, along with pz orbital band model. Poissons equation
solver is used to calculate the electrostatic potential. The results obtained show that the device performance greatly
depends on the S/D doping concentration.

Introduction

Graphene which is sp2 hybridised single layer of graphite forming

honey comb lattice of carbon atoms has attracted researchers for
its extraordinary properties that includes high mobility, high
strength and optical properties [1, 2]. A few years later, after the
discovery of graphene it was predicted that it will soon take
electronic industry at a higher level [3] and it did what it promised
[4]. Graphene due to its ballistic transport properties have worked
wonders in electronics and is still progressing at a faster pace. In
the last few years, the progress of graphene was very rapid and
graphenes prospects proceeded to improve with every new
research. Graphene proved to be a potential substitute for silicon
in transistors with much better electronic properties [5, 6].
Graphene-based transistors have reached maximum cut-off
frequency of 1 THz at the channel length of about 100 nm [7] and
now the researchers are working towards bendable electronic
devices based on graphene owing to its properties of conductivity,
transparency and elasticity [8]. It is expected that graphene
technology might supersede silicon technology by 2020 [79].
Although graphene show high mobility, it is considered unsuitable
to be used in electronic devices as it gives low ratio of ON state
current (Ion) to OFF state current (Ioff ), i.e Ion/Ioff due to zero band
gaps. To improve Ion/Ioff, band gap can be induced by converting
graphene into graphene nanoribbon (GNR) which is nothing but a
narrowed strip of graphene. The energy gap induced is inversely
proportional to the width of the GNR as shown in Fig. 1 and
nanoribbon is proved to be the potential candidate for transistor
technology [5].
Graphene-based transistors can be of two types: Schottky barrier
eld effect transistors (SBFET) and GNR eld effect transistors
(GNRFET). With the development in nano-device technologies it
is necessary to nd techniques to reduce the leakage current,
which is particularly signicant in small-scale devices. To
maintain minimum leakage current in nanoscaled metal oxide
semiconductor eld effect transistor (MOSFET), source and drain
(S/D) doping concentration needs to be optimised to maintain S/D
parasitic resistance (RSD) [11]. SBFET has low RSD hence is
preferred over GNRFET [12]. However, studies showed low
performance characteristics of SBFET in terms of leakage current
and low Ion/Ioff [13], hence the focus was again shifted to
GNRFETs. The major problem with the GNRFET is band-to-band
tunnelling which dominates Ioff and provides for 18% of the Ion

IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 6, pp. 457462
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

[14]. Tunnelling is the quantum mechanical effect that degrades

the device performance by decreasing Ion/Ioff.
Much research has been done on GNRFET with respect to channel
doping [15, 16], gate oxide [17], gate material [18], dimensional
scaling [19] and defects [20]. However, there is much more scope
of research with respect to S/D doping concentration. In order to
exploit full capabilities of GNRFET, S/D engineering is a
signicant study. In this work, GNRFET is numerically studied at
different percentage of doping concentration of S/D terminals of
the devices.
Effect of changing the doping concentration on the performance
parameters is examined. From the simulation results, it is found
that on increasing the doping concentration the leakage current
increases while other performance parameters such as frequency of
the device improves.
The main contribution of this work is as follows:
Extensive numerical simulation study is done to evaluate the
GNRFET device performance parameters with respect to S/D
doping concentration.
This study reveals that changing S/D doping concentration shifts
the minimum conduction point.

Simulation approach

Dual gated geometry of GNRFET is assembled as shown in Fig. 2a

with 1 nm SiO2 gate insulator ( = 3.9), 20 nm channel length and
10 nm S/D terminals. The dual gate MOSFET is used because it
enhances the gate control capabilities of the device. The channel
material is a perfect armchair edge type GNR (AGNR) as shown
in Fig. 2b with a band gap of 0.6 eV, width of the ribbon is
1.37 nm (six atoms along the width of nanoribbon). SiO2 is used
as a dielectric owing to its good thermal and electric insulating
properties. Doping is done in the GNR with the channel length of
20 nm as intrinsic and the S/D length of 10 nm each. S/D are
assumed to be doped reservoirs as shown in Fig. 2b. Step doping
prole for S/D doping is assumed as shown in Fig. 2c. The doping
concentration of S/D are changed from 0.25% (i.e. 1 doping
atom in total of 540 atoms) to 2% (8 doping atoms in total of 540
atoms). As the doping concentration is changed, the changes in
drain current against gate potential and drain potential are obtained
at each doping concentration. Transfer characteristics (Fig. 3), Ioff,

457

Fig. 1 Band gap against number of carbon atom along the width of GNR
where n is separated into three groups n = 3 m, 3m + 1 and 3m + 2 (m is
any integer) [10]

Ion/Ioff ratio, cut-off frequency, transconductance and switching time

are also plotted at various (S/D) doping concentration.
Three-dimensional (3D) Poisson solver is used which solves the
Poisson equation given by
[[ (r)(r)] = q[p(r) n(r) + ND (r) NA (r) + rfix ]

(1)

where [ (r) is dielectric constant, (r) is electrostatic potential, p(r)

and n(r) are the hole and electron concentrations, respectively, r is
the coordinate of the carbon site, NA and ND are donor and
acceptor concentrations, respectively, and x is the xed charge.
The self-consistently solved Poissons equation gives the potential
that represents the electronelectron interactions.
To stimulate the device characteristics, non-equilibrium Greens
function formalism is considered, self-consistently coupled with
3D solution PoissonSchrodinger equation. Equation (2) represents
the Greens function

G( E ) = EI H



(2)

where E represents energy, I is the identity matrix, H is the

Hamiltonian of GNR used, S represents self-energy of source
terminal and D represents the self-energy of drain terminal. H
gives the description of the isolated device.
The Hamiltonian (H ) of the device is determined from orbital
tight binding nearest neighbour model. These self-energy matrices
() are added to the H in order to account for device coupling to
the reservoirs. These matrices store all the physics of the device
that is to be simulated. Assuming the ballistic transport in
graphene channel, real approach is followed with Dirac
Hamiltonian constructed with atomistic ( pz orbital) bases and tight
binding model with tight binding parameter t = 2.7 eV, which is
suitable parameter for arm chair graphene obtained from extended
Huckels theory in order to describe the characteristics of
GNRFET. After this, electron and hole concentrations are
represented as n(r) and p(r), respectively. Where
+1

a Cross-sectional view of simulated device 1 nm wide silicon dioxide insulator for both
back gate and top gate, both top gate and back gates are of 20 nm, intrinsic graphene
material for channel is of 20 nm in length and S/D contacts are of 10 nm each
b AGNR of width 1.37 nm and length of 40 nm in which 20 nm is used as intrinsic
channel and 10 nm is the doped S/D terminals (ohmic contacts)
c Step doping prole in which doping is done in the 10 nm part from both the sides

occupation factor, Fermi level of S/D are represented as EFS and

EFD, respectively, and |Cs|2 and |CD|2 are the probability of
reaching of injected states by S/D, respectively, to the carbon site r.
Current is calculated using a well-known Landauers formula for
current calculation in nanoscale devices given by

n(r) = 2

Fig. 2 Dual gated geometry of GNRFET



dE[|Cs (E, r )|2 f (E EFS ) + |CD (E, r )|2 f E EFD ]

I=

2q
h

+1
1

dE T (E)[f (E EFS ) f (E EFD )]

(5)

where q is the electron charge, h is the Plancks constant and T is the

transmission coefcient calculated as
T = Tr



S




G
D

(6)

As already stated, the Schrodinger equation was solved by Greens

function; the technique used to compute Greens function is
recursive Greens function technique. Results are obtained by a
code based on NewtonRaphson method in which one starts with
a value reasonably closer to the root and then the iterations are
performed to satisfy a condition and the true root is obtained. All
the simulations are performed using NanoTcad Vides, open source
software.

Ei

(3)

Results and discussion

(see (4))
where r is the coordinate of the carbon site, f is the Fermi Dirac
p(r) = 2

+1

In conformity with the current and future technology requirements, it

is important to scale down the channel length to as much small value

dE[|Cs (E, r )|2 (1 f (E EFS) ) + |CD (E, r )|2 (1 f (E EFD) )]

(4)

Ei

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IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 6, pp. 457462
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

Fig. 3 IdsVgs curve is shown at different percentage of (S/D) doping concentration with Vds = 0.8 V (step size is 0.1 V), where Ids is the drain current, Vgs is the
gate voltage and Vds is the drain voltage applied

that can be possible. However, short channel devices give low

performance in terms of OFF state current. The ideal requirement
of the device is the minimum OFF state current and the maximum
ON state current. In this study, the transistor with 20 nm channel
length is simulated at different S/D doping concentrations starting
with ballistic simulation of input characteristics of dual gated
GNRFET.
Ids against Vgs curve (Ids is the source to drain current and Vgs is the
applied source to gate voltage) as shown in Fig. 3 indicates that as the
S/D doping concentration is increased from 0.25 to 2%, the Ion
increases as shown in Fig. 4. The maximum Ion is achieved at 2%
which is equal to 2.25 105 A. The increase in Ion with the
increase in S/D doping concentration is due to the fact that with
higher dopant in the source, there are more carriers in the source
extension for direct source to channel tunnelling [20]. Ion is the
current at Vgs = Voff + Vdd, where Voff is the gate voltage at which
the Ids is minimum and Vdd is the supplied voltage which is set
equal to Vds.
On the other hand, analysing the variations in Ioff with respect to
the variation in S/D doping concentration gives an idea that on
increasing the S/D doping concentration the Ioff increases as
shown in Fig. 5. The off current increases due to the increase in
band-to-band Klien Zener tunnelling probability at higher S/D
doping concentrations, according to the given formula [21]


h V
F
T = exp pk
qES/D

(7)

where T is the tunnelling probability, k is the longitudinal component

of wave vector, h is Plancks constant, VF is the Fermi velocity in
graphene (105 m/s), q is the electronic charge (1.6 1019 C) and
ES/D is the electric eld formed at the S/D channel junction which
is given by
ES/D =

(8)

where VS/D is the potential barrier at the junction and x is the

effective width of the barrier. The tunnelling probability is
exponentially sensitive to junction electric eld. As the doping
density in the S/D extensions increases, the depletion width (x)
increases and the junction electric eld ES/D decreases. The
decrease in junction electric eld increases the tunnelling
probability. Hence, the Ioff current due to tunnelling is increased
with S/D doping concentration, which increases the power loss.
A similar trend can be seen from the plots in Fig. 6 showing the Ids
against Vgs curves at drain voltages 0.5 and 1.5 V, as observed in the
plots with Vds of 0.8 V (Figs. 3 and 5). Focusing on Ioff values, again
similar result is observed as the Ioff is increasing with increase in S/D
doping concentration for both the Vds values of 0.5 V as shown in
Fig. 7a and 1.5 V as shown in Fig. 7b.
Today, almost all electronic systems are based on its digital
constituent parts. Ion/Ioff should be high for achieving high-quality
digital response. Low Ion/Ioff cause issues for mainstream logic
applications. Hence, increasing Ion/Ioff is a critical issue. As
discussed earlier, the Ion as well as Ioff increases with the increase
in S/D doping concentration. Fig. 8 shows when the S/D doping
concentration increases from 0.25 to 2%, the Ion/Ioff decreases.
This means that increase in Ion is much lesser than the increase in
Ioff. The Ion/Ioff is 1900 at doping concentration of 0.25% and
70 at 2% of doping concentration. This huge change in Ion/Ioff
can darastically affect the device performance. This clears the path
for further research to increase the Ion/Ioff with the doping
concentration of S/D. The Ion/Ioff can be increased by increasing
graphene layers [22], producing line defects [23] and using special
fabrication techniques [24].
Transconductance is the key design parameter for MOSFETs
which gives us the information about the gain of a device and is
given by
gm =

Fig. 4 Ion against S/D doping concentration

VS/D
Dx

Ids
|
Vgs VDS

(9)

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

459

Fig. 5 Ioff against S/D doping concentration

As the S/D doping concentration increases, the slope of the IdsVgs

curve increases and hence the transconductance as shown in
Fig. 9. The higher is the transconductance, higher is the gain of
the amplifying devices. This indicates that for a GNRFET to be
used as an amplier, doping concentration of S/D regions must be
increased. With the increase in number of dopants in S/D, the
transconductance increases and hence the amplifying potential
improves.
Transconductance is directly proportional to the cut-off frequency
of the device which is given by

fT =

gm
2pCG

(10)

where gm is the transconductance and CG is the gate capacitance.

Recent research works have proved that the intrinsic cut-off
frequency of graphene MOSFETs with channel lengths below 100
nm is in the range of few hundreds of giga hertz which
signicantly outperform the conventional silicon channel metal
oxide semiconductor devices [25, 26].
Fig. 10a depicts that by increasing the number of dopants in S/D
terminals of the device, cut-off frequency increases and hence the
device performs better. In addition, parasitic capacitances are not
accounted for the cut-off frequency of the devices and can affect
the frequency values. High frequency implies high switching
speed. Switching speed is the measure of the rate at which the
output state of a digital device is changed with the change in the
input state. Speed is one of the critical parameters for high-speed
processors and is a area of research with immense scope.
The plot in Fig. 11b clearly shows that the intrinsic delay (t) of
GNRFET decreases, as the S/D doping concentration is increased.
Intrinsic delay is calculated as

t=

1
fT

(11)

When the device is used for switching application, the principle

requirement is the switching between the maximum and the
minimum resistance state in shortest possible time. Speed of the
device is one of the most demanding parameter in todays
technological world. Switching speed is the function of delay. One
of the delay types is the intrinsic delay that is caused due to the
internal capacitance of the device. According to the plot in
Fig. 10b, small delays are extracted at higher doping

Fig. 6 Ids against Vgs curves at drain voltages 0.5 and 1.5 V
a Ids against Vgs curves at Vds of 1.5 V
b Ids against Vgs curves at Vds of 0.5 V at different doping concentrations of 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2%

Fig. 7 Ioff against S/D doping concentration at 0.5 and 1.5 V

a Ioff against S/D doping concentration at Vds = 0.5 V
b Ioff against S/D doping concentration at Vds = 1.5 V

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

Fig. 8 Ion/Ioff against S/D doping concentration

Fig. 11 Subthreshold swing against S/D doping concentration at Vds of 0.8

and 0.5 V

Fig. 9 Transconductance against S/D doping concentration

Fig. 12 Dirac point (V) against S/D doping concentration at different Vds

concentrations. This concludes that for switching applications the S/

D concentrations of GNRFET should be high.
One of the factors that affect the device speed and power is
subthreshold swing represented by S. Fig. 11 shows the plot of
subthreshold swing against S/D doping concentration at Vds of 0.8
and 0.5 V. Subthreshold swing increases with the increase in S/D
doping concentration. Low subthreshold swing is greatly required
for high Ion/Ioff, low power and high speed. According to the
obtained results, low S/D doping concentration should be
maintained for small subthreshold swing
S=

d Vgs
dlogIds

(12)

where S is calculated in weak inversion region.

Another interesting observation is that changing the S/D doping
concentration modulates minimum conduction point known as the

Dirac point; the point at which Ids is minimum. Earlier studies

show that the Dirac point can be changed by varying the drain to
source voltage [27] or by some other variations in the GNRFET
[16, 2730]. Fig. 3 shows the simulation result which reveals that
varying the S/D doping concentrations results in Dirac point shift.
As the dopant density in S/D is increased, the minimum
conduction point is decreased. At 0.25% the Dirac point is at 0.6
V which shifts down to 0.3 V at 2% as shown in Fig. 12. Dirac
point corresponds to the point at which the hole and electron
densities are equal and a neutrality point is achieved. Gate voltage
is the factor that controls the number of charge carriers in the
channel. The obtained results reveal that as the S/D doping
concentration increases, the neutrality point is achieved at lesser
gate voltages. With the shift in Dirac point to lower gate voltage,
on-state of the device is also shifted to lower voltages thus it can
be concluded that for low power applications high S/D doping
concentration is required.

Fig. 10 Cut-off frequency and intrinsic delay against S/D doping concentration
a Cut-off frequency against S/D doping concentration
b Intrinsic delay against S/D doping concentration

IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2016, Vol. 10, Iss. 6, pp. 457462
& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016

461

Conclusion

Today one of the most extensively studied nanomaterial is graphene

and is being focused by scholars in the eld of electronics for its
superior performance as eld effect transistors. Signicant
characteristics of the device such as Ion/Ioff, frequency, intrinsic
delay and input transconductance variations at different level of
doping concentration are studied. As the doping concentration is
increased up to 2%, the operational characteristics of the device
viz. cut-off frequency and transconductance are improved.
Increasing the doping concentration, cut-off frequency is increased
that increases devices potential to be used in high-speed
applications. On increasing the cut-off frequency, transconductance
is also increased that enhances the amplifying characteristics of the
device. Ioff increases signicantly due to increase in tunnelling
probability which degrades the device performance. Hence, there
is a trade-off between the Ion/Ioff and other important performance
parameters such as speed and gain of the device. It can be
suggested that low doping concentration should be maintained, to
get high Ion/Ioff. The Dirac point in the input characteristics of the
device can also be shifted according to the application
requirements by changing the S/D doping concentration. There is a
need for further research in this area for the optimisation of
GNRFET.

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& The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2016