The Effect of Inelastic Phonon Scattering on Carbon Nanotube-Based Transistor Performance

Carbon nanotube (CNT) based transistors have been studied in recent years as potential alternatives to CMOS devices because of their capability of near ballistic transport. In this work the non-equilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) formalism is used to perform a comprehensive study of CNT based transistors. The effect of inelastic phonon scattering on the gate-delay time of CNT based transistors is studied for a wide range of phonon energies. The results which confirm experimental data, show that depending on the phonon energy, inelastic scattering affects the steady-state on-current and switching response of CNT based transistors differently. The on-current can be close to the ballistic limit, whereas the gate delay time is above that limit.