After more than five decades, Moore’s Law for transistors is approaching the end of the international technology roadmap of semiconductors (ITRS). The fate of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) architecture has become increasingly unknown. In this era, 3D transistors in the form of gate-all-around (GAA) transistors are being considered as an excellent solution to scaling down beyond the 5 nm technology node, which solves the difficulties of carrier transport in the channel region which are mainly rooted in short channel effects (SCEs). In parallel to Moore, during the last two decades, transistors with a fully depleted SOI (FDSOI) design have also been processed for low-power electronics. Among all the possible designs, there are also tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs), which offer very low power consumption and decent electrical characteristics. This review article presents new transistor designs, along with the integration of electronics and photonics, simulation methods, and continuation of CMOS process technology to the 5 nm technology node and beyond. The content highlights the innovative methods, challenges, and difficulties in device processing and design, as well as how to apply suitable metrology techniques as a tool to find out the imperfections and lattice distortions, strain status, and composition in the device structures.

GeSn alloys have already attracted extensive attention due to their excellent properties and wide-ranging electronic and optoelectronic applications. Both theoretical and experimental results have shown that direct bandgap GeSn alloys are preferable for Si-based, high-efficiency light source applications. For the abovementioned purposes, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), physical vapour deposition (PVD), and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies have been extensively explored to grow high-quality GeSn alloys. However, CVD is the dominant growth method in the industry, and it is therefore more easily transferred. This review is focused on the recent progress in GeSn CVD growth (including ion implantation, in situ doping technology, and ohmic contacts), GeSn detectors, GeSn lasers, and GeSn transistors. These review results will provide huge advancements for the research and development of high-performance electronic and optoelectronic devices.

Among photodetectors, avalanche photodiodes (APDs) have an important place due to their excellent sensitivity to light. APDs transform photons into electrons and then multiply the electrons, leading to an amplified photocurrent. APDs are promising for faint light detection owing to this outstanding advantage, which will boost LiDAR applications. Although Si APDs have already been commercialized, their spectral region is very limited in many applications. Therefore, it is urgently demanded that the spectral region APDs be extended to the short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) region, which means better atmospheric transmission, a lower solar radiation background, a higher laser eye safety threshold, etc. Up until now, both Ge (GeSn) and InGaAs were employed as the SWIR absorbers. The aim of this review article is to provide a full understanding of Ge(GeSn) and InGaAs for PDs, with a focus on APD operation in the SWIR spectral region, which can be integrated onto the Si platform and is potentially compatible with CMOS technology.

Based on an analytical surface potential and a simple mathematical approximation for the source depletion width, a physics-based capacitance model with closed form for silicon double-gate tunnel field-effect transistors (TFETs) is developed. Good agreements between the proposed model and the numerical simulations have been achieved, which reveal that the tunneling carriers from source have negligible contribution to the channel charges and the gate capacitance can be almost acted as the gate-drain capacitance, which is quite different from that of MOSFETs. This model without involving any iterative process is more SPICE friendly for circuit simulations compared with the table-lookup approach and would be helpful for developing the transient performance of TFET-based circuits.

The combination of the InAs/GaSb heterojunction and the line-tunneling mechanism is considered as one of the most promising approaches to simultaneously obtain high ON-state current ( ${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}$ ) and low subthreshold swing (SS) in tunneling field effect transistors (TFETs). However, in an InAs/GaSb line-tunneling field effect transistor (LTFET), the isolation between the source and the drain is a big issue. The leakage current path could lead to complete loss of the OFF-state characteristics in extreme cases. The “cantilever” or “airbridge” structure is usually introduced to cutoff the leakage path. However, it also induces serious reliability problems and brings additional process complexity. In this article, an N+ doped buried drain is first proposed to form a reverse biased p-n junction with the $\text{P}\boldsymbol +$ source and effectively cuts the leakage current path off. The InAs $\boldsymbol /$ GaSb LTFETs with this buried drain technique exhibits ${I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}} \boldsymbol / {I}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle OFF}} > {10}^{{7}}$ and SS < 60 mV $\boldsymbol /$ dec for five decades of current. Besides the excellent performance, the buried drain technique keeps the device planar and brings no additional fabrication complexity, which is of great significance for future experimental investigation and the low power applications.

The nanowire gate-all-around structure with the ultimate channel electrostatic integrity exhibits the best immunity to short channel effects and improved scaling capability compared with other multigate structures. In this article, both the tunneling current and capacitance models are developed simultaneously for nanowire tunneling field-effect transistors (FETs). Based on the same surface potential model, the developed current model and capacitance model share the common parameters and therefore can be easily integrated as a complete model for circuit-level simulations. Moreover, there is no iterative process involved during the model derivation indicating the models would be efficient for circuit simulations. The proposed models are also implemented into a circuit simulator with SPICE net-list to simulate the inverter, NAND, and NOR gates. Correct circuit behaviors obtained validate the model compatibility with the SPICE platform and usefulness for the further investigation of nanowire-based tunnel FET (TFET) circuits.