Performance Analysis of the Dielectrically Modulated Junction-Less Nanotube Field Effect Transistor for Biomolecule Detection

The design of a high-performance Dielectrically Modulated Field Effect Transistor (DMFET) with smaller device dimension (channel length ≤ 100nm) has recently drawn significant research attention for point-of-care (POC) diagenesis applications. Driven by this paradigm, a Hetero-Gate Metal Dielectrically Modulated Junction-Less Nanotube Field Effect Transistor (DM-JLNFET) architecture is introduced and systematically investigated for label-free electrochemical biosensing application with the help of extensive numerical device simulations. The DM-JLNFET is carefully designed to exploit the advantages of superior gate control over channel electrostatics and electron injection component as well as strong immunity towards the short channel effects that lead to a notably high sensing performance compared to its conventional counterparts. In this context, the underlying physics of the transduction mechanism is analyzed in detail based on the device electrostatics and the carrier transport mechanism. The sensing performance of the proposed biosensor is quantified in terms of the drain current and threshold voltage sensitivities, which represents the relative modulations in these parameters with biomolecule conjugation. Typically, the DM-JLNFET exhibits a drain current and threshold voltage sensitivities as high as $1\times 10$ 12 and 0.70, respectively, for biomolecule dielectric constant above 2. Furthermore, the sensing performance demonstrates strong immunities towards non-uniform cavity occupancy. Finally, extensive comparative performance analysis with Dielectrically Modulated Nanowire Field Effect Transistor (DM-NWFET) is performed. The results exhibit that the proposed DM-JLNFET can offer more than 100% and eight orders of magnitude improvements in the threshold voltage and drain current sensitivities, respectively, for a range of small biomolecule dielectric constants.