Strain engineering in functional materials

Abstract

Silicon based complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistor (CMOSFET) technology has continued to progress unabated for last five decades despite various challenges arising due to extreme scaling. Pervasive use of Si technology is evident in a large spectrum of products ranging from high end mainframe and server computers for businesses to laptops, smartphones, and internet of things (IoT) for consumer-oriented products. There is an ever-increasing demand to improve Si device performance for the above described and future products. Strain engineering is one of the key aspects to improve transistor performance. In this review, we describe strain engineering in silicon based advanced CMOS technology, which has evolved from conventional two-dimensional (2D) MOSFET structure to 3D FinFET structure. The impact of shrinking dimensions of scaled FinFETs on channel strain engineering as well as options for strain engineering in future CMOS architecture are described. Finally, strain engineering in non-silicon based functional materials such as gallium nitride (GaN) and 2D materials will be briefly discussed.