Mass Production of Silicon MOS-SETs: Can We Live with Nano-Devices' Variability?

It is very important to study variability of nanodevices because the inability to produce large amounts of identical nanostructures is eventually a bottleneck for any application. In fact variability is already a major concern for CMOS circuits. In this work we report on the variability of dozens of silicon single-electron transistors (SETs). At room temperature their variability is compared with the variability of the most advanced CMOS FET i.e. the ultra thin Silicon-on-Insulator Multiple gate FET (UT SOI MuGFET). We found that dopants diffused from Source -Drain into the edge of the undoped channel are the main source of variability. This emphasizes the role of extrinsic factors like the contact junctions for variability of any nanodevice.