Enhanced Circuit Densities in Epitaxially Defined FinFETs (EDFinFETs) over FinFETs

Abstract

FinFET technology is prone to suffer from Line Edge Roughness (LER) based VT variation with scaling. To address this, we proposed an Epitaxially Defined (ED) FinFET (EDFinFET) as an alternate to FinFET architecture for 10 nm node and beyond. We showed by statistical simulations that EDFinFET reduces LER based VT variability by 90% and overall variability by 59%. However, EDFinFET consists of wider fins as the fin widths are not constrained by electrostatics and variability (cf. FinFETs have fin width ~ LG/3 where LG is gate-length). This indicates that EDFinFET based circuits may be less dense. In this study we show that wide fins enable taller fin heights. The ability to engineer multiple STI levels on tall fins enables different transistor widths (i.e. various W/Ls e.g. 1-10) in a single fin. This capability ensures that even though individual EDFinFET devices have ~2x larger footprints than FinFETs, EDFinFET may produce equal or higher circuit density for basic building blocks like inverters or NAND gates for W/Ls of 2 and higher.