Tunnel Field Effect Transistor Based Biosensors: A

Review
2021 7th International Conference on Signal Processing and Communication (ICSC) | 978-1-6654-2739-5/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICSC53193.2021.9673155

Km. Sucheta Singh Satyendra Kumar

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Jaypee Institute of Information Technology Jaypee Institute of Information Technology
Noida, India Noida, India
sengers1234@gmail.com satyendra.kumar@jiit.ac.in

Kaushal Nigam
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Jaypee Institute of Information Technology
Noida, India
kaushal.nigam@jiit.ac.in

Abstract—Tunnel field effect transistor (TFET) based biosen-
sors are becoming prominent as a good electronic device for
label-free biomolecules detection. This paper presents a review
of different structures of the TFET based biosensors. The basic
idea behind the concept of label-free detection of biomolecules
is the conversion of biological events to the electrical signals.
These biological events include the biomolecules, which can be
detected by two approaches, namely gating effect and dielec-
tric modulation. Biomolecules are categorized as charged and
neutral biomolecules. For the detection of these charged/neutral
biomolecules various biosensor structures based on TFET have
been adopted. Therefore, this paper provides a brief summary
on different TFET based biosensors for label-free detection of
biomolecules. This paper also shows that TFETs are found as
the promising candidate for biosensor application.
Keywords—Tunnel FET, Biosensor, Gating effect, Dielectric
modulation
I. I NTRODUCTION
In the modern era of semiconductor technology, the continu-
ous down-sizing of transistors is necessary for the fulfillment
of Moore’s law [1]. As the down-scaling of transistors en-
ters into nano-scale regime, the performance of metal oxide
semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) degrades
with concern to short channel effect (SCE). Such kinds of
degradations in MOSFET performances restrict the use of it
for various applications such as memory devices, biosensing
and switching applications etc [2]- [5]. Therefore, many re-
searchers have investigated various transistor based structures
for such applications [6]- [9]. TFET is one of them, which
can be used as a good candidate to overcome the problems
of MOSFET. TFET offers the subthreshold slope (SS) under
60 mV/decade, lower leakage current and higher switching
ratio [10]- [24]. However, TFETs suffer from the problem
of lower ON-state current and ambipolarity [25]. Hence,
various structures such as TMG TFET, hetero-junction TFET,
cylindrical TFET and SOI TFET have been investigated by
many researchers [26]- [29]. TFETs have been widely used in
the memory, biosensor, digital circuits and other low power
applications [30]- [32]. Moreover, recently FET based biosen-
sors have attracted much attention among various researchers.
Many investigations of emerging devices such as nano-wire
FETs, carbon nano-tube FETs and ion-sensitive FETs have
been done for the detection of biomolecules [33]. However,
superior performances of TFETs structures have made the
device more sensitive towards biomolecules detection [34]-
[37]. Biomolecules categorized as charged and neutral, are
found to be detected by TFET based biosensor with high
sensitivity [38].
II. S IMULATION STRATEGY OF TFET BASED BIOSENSOR
Based on the mechanism used to detect the biomolecules,
FET based biosensors are divided into two parts [34]- [41]:
• Dielectric modulation
• Gating effect
Brief description of classification of FET based biosensors
is shown in Fig. 1. The gating effects involves the process
of immobilization of biomolecules using receptors ions along
with the gate dielectric material on it’s surface. This effect
is useful for the detection of charged biomolecules [41].
Furthermore, for the detection of the neutral biomolecules as
well as charged biomolecules, dielectric modulation strategy
can be employed [34]- [40]. Dielectric modulation approach
includes the study of variations in the drain current by the
effect of change in the gate dielectric constant. The effect of
gate dielectric constant on drain current (ID ) can be studied
by the following equation, which is 2D poisson’s band model
of TFET [42]:
 
Eg A −BEG
ID = Wdev .TSief f etive .exp (1)
Wmin 2 B qWmin

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 Fig. 1. Strategies for FET based biosensors.

Here, EG is the band gap, A and B are the constants which Fig. 2. Cross-sectional structure of p-n-p-n TFET and p-i-n TFET with nano-
gap cavity filled by air and biomolecules. For p-i-n TFET region I and II
are depending on the material, TSief f ective represents the are identical and parameters chosen are gap thickness (tg ) = 9 nm, oxide
effective body thickness of the silicon, Wdev . is the width thickness (tox ) = 10 nm, oxide permittivity (ox ) = 10, silicon thickness
of the device and Wmin represents the minimum value of (tSi ) = 10 nm, source doping (NA ) = 1020 /cm−3 , drain doping (ND ) =
1020 /cm−3 , channel concentration (p− ) = 1015 /cm−3 , channel length (L)
tunneling width. According to this equation drain current = 100 nm, native oxide thickness (tSiO2 ) = 1 nm and cavity length (Lg ) =
depends on gate dielectric constant of the device. To complete 30 nm. For p-n-p-n TFET, n+ pocket is used with heavily doping of (NP )
the device structure of TFET based biosensor, nano-gap cavity = 5 × 1019 /cm−3 and width (LP ) = 3 nm. Here region II is the channel
region [35].
can be embedded at gate insulator oxide. This cavity can
be either partially filled or completely filled. Fill factor is
used to find the occupancy of biomolecules in the nano-gap TABLE I: DC PARAMETERS OF P-N-P-N TFET BASED BIOSENSOR FOR
cavity. The length of nano-gap cavity should be large enough DIFFERENT CHANNEL THICKNESSES [34]
(usually 10-11 nm) for the allowance of proper biomolecules
[35]. The simulation of the device structure is carried out by Channel On- On- δVth (V)=Vth,k=4 − Vth,k=12
using different semiconductor oxides with altered dielectric thickness current current
constants. The presence of charged biomolecules can be find (tch ) (A/µm) at (A/µm) at
(nm) k=4 k=12
by considering oxide charges at semiconductor-oxide interface. 25 1.29E-9 1.83E-6 1.06
To simulate the TFET based biosensor in silvaco atlas TCAD 30 4.35E-10 8.98E-7 1.16
tool, band-gap narrowing, filed-dependent mobility, non-local 35 2.51E-10 7.44E-7 1.19
40 1.69E-10 6.65E-7 1.21
band to band tunneling, band-gap narrowing and fermi-dirac
statistics models have been used in different works [43].
III. VARIOUS PROSPECTS AND DEVICE GEOMETRIES OF
increasing the thickness of the channel (tch ) for all higher
BIOSENSING USING TFET
dielectric constant materials. In TFET based biosensors no
For facilitating the detection of biomolecules at low concen- significant impact in sensitivity can be observed for different
tration and to reduce the response time, an ultra-sensitive low cavity length, because TFET works on the principal of junction
power TFET based biosensor has been proposed over FET phenomenon unlike thermionic emission in MOSFET. The
based biosensor. Ion-sensitive FETs (ISFETs) were highly sensitivity parameters for the detection of biomolecules in
efficient and sensitive, but they suffers for the detection of terms of drain current and threshold voltage can be given as
neutral biomolecules [44]. Therefore, dielectric modulated [45]:
TFET based biosensor has been reported in [35] to overcome ID,k
Sensitivity, (SI ) = |V (2)
the problem of ISFET. In this work, TFET based biosensor ID,k=1 gs
has been proposed for the first time and compared with its
VT,k=1
counterpart structure of MOSFET based biosensor. The cross- Sensitivity, (SVT ) = (3)
sectional view of TFET based biosensor is shown in Fig. VT,k
2. This work has proven that p-i-n TFET based biosensor Here, VT,k and ID,k represents the threshold voltages and
provides ultra-sensitivity towards different biomolecules as drain currents, respectively for different dielectric constants,
compared to p-n-p-n TFET and MOSFET. The comparison ID,k=1 and VT,k=1 are the values of drain current and thresh-
is also summarized in Table I. Furthermore, for label-free old voltage when cavity is filled with air. The sensitivity
detection of biomolecules analytical modelling of TFET based parameters are generally taken with respect to the reference
biosensor has also been presented in [34]. This work has value when structure is excluded from biomolecules. Another
shown that, sensitivity of the biosensor can be enhanced by approach based on ambipolarity has also been investigated for

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 Fig. 3. Structure of DM-DGTFET based biosensor to present the ambipolar
behaviour with the parameters cavity length Lcavity = 150 nm, silicon
thickness tSi = 50 nm, oxide thickness tox = 10nm and gate length =
200 nm. [46]

TABLE II: COMPARATIVE TABLE WITH REGARD TO CURRENT

SENSITIVITY FOR DIFFERENT TFET-BASED BIOSENSORS.

Device structures Current Sensitivity References

at k=4
Charge-plasma based 1E8 [38]
DM junction-less
TFET
Short-gate TFET 1.0 [39]
SiGe source based 500 [40]
DMTFET
Cavity-on-source 1E11 [47]
charge-plasma TFET
Fig. 4. Schematic representation of (a) FG-DMTFET based biosensor (b)
SG-DMTFET based bio-sensor and (c) Comparative plots of energy band
biosensor application by shifting the nano-gap cavity towards diagrams for both the structures at drain to source voltage = 0.4 V and gate
channel-drain junction [46], this work has been simulated to source voltage = 1.2 V [39].
in silvaco ATLAS tool. The device structure for dielectric
modulated double gate TFET (DMDG-TFET) based biosen-
sor is shown in Fig. 3. This work has been summarised
as, using n-type operation sensitivity can be enhanced with
positively charged biomolecules, whereas negatively charged
biomolecules can improve the sensitivity for ambipolar state.
In 2015, S. Kanugo et al. [39] has compared the full-
gate DMTFET (FG-DMTFET) and short-gate DMTFET (SG-
DMTFET) based biosensor on the basis of their performance
analysis. The structural representation of these devices are
shown in Fig. 4. In this work the transfer characteristics of
both the devices have been compared and found that the drain
Fig. 5. SS sensitivity of dielectric modulated junction-less TFET in terms of
current is higher for FG-DMTFET at low gate biasing as subthreshold-slope for variations in dielectric constants [38].
compared to SG-DMTFET. Next, to reduce the fabrication
complexity and to provide better potential for biomolecules
detection, a new junctionless-TFET based biosensor for label-
IV. C OMPARATIVE CHART FOR DIFFERENT BIOSENSOR
free detection has been proposed [38]. This work has shown
STRUCTURES
high sensitivity with the variation in dielectric constant, which
is shown in Fig. 5 at oxide charge density (ρ = 0).
Table II illustrates the device sensitivities for different
TFET-based biosensor architectures.

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 V. C ONCLUSIONS
This review paper has presented the various strategies and
device structures of TFET based biosensors. TFETs have been
emerged as one of the potential candidate for biosensing ap-
plication. The detection of biomolecules (neutral and charged
biomolecules) has been done by detecting the presence of
biomolecules in the nano-gap cavity. Such biological events
has been converted into electrical signal to know the further
properties of TFET based biosensor. Furthermore, the lower
subthreshold -slope, lower leakage current and simpler fabri-
cation process make TFET a suitable candidate to achieve the
higher sensitivity towards different biomolecules.
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