High performance silicene nanoribbon field effect transistors with current saturation

We investigate field effect transistors (FETs) based on semiconducting armchair-edged silicene nanoribbons (ASiNRs) by using ab initio quantum transport calculations. These FETs have high performance with an I <Subscript>on</Subscript>/I <Subscript>off</Subscript> ratio of over 10<Superscript>6</Superscript> and a subthreshold swing as small as 90 mV/decade. Impressively, the output characteristic shows a saturation behavior. The drain-current saturation is an advantage with respect to device speed, but it’s usually absent in carbon-based (e.g., graphene, graphene nanoribbons, carbon nanotubes, and organic single-molecule) FETs. Copyright EDP Sciences, SIF, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012