Revealing the Reliability Performance of a Dielectric Modulated Negative Capacitance Junctionless FinFET Biosensor

In this study, we proposed a dielectric modulated (DM) Negative Capacitance Junctionless FinFET (JLNC-FinFET) to achieve precise label-free electrical detection of biomolecules, including streptavidin (K=2.1), biotin (K=2.63), APTES (K=3.57), and Keratin (K=8) etc., within the designated cavity region. The proposed approach employs variations in the threshold voltage for which the sensitivity (S_VTH) has a maximum value of 15.2% for Pyridine (K=12), serving as discerning metrics for detecting different neutral and charged biomolecules. The baseline Junctionless FinFET, which is fabricated and characterized, in our previous publication, is opted for this study. Realizing the ferroelectric layer over its baseline counterpart offers a notable I_ON/I_OFF improvement (10⁴) in JLNC FinFET. The reliability concerns of metal gate granularities (MGG) and line edge roughness (LER) have been considered to explore the impact on biomolecule detection, i.e., biosensor sensitivity. The results reveal that larger grain sizes exacerbate work function variability, especially with biomolecules resembled by high-K cavities. Moreover, the LER significantly impacts device parameters, which worsens the detection of biomolecules with high-K and LER amplitudes. Thus, the proposed study is worth exploring to acquire the design guidelines for reliability-aware biosensors.