Reducing Short-Circuit Current of CMOS Inverter Circuits with “PN-Body Tied SOI-FET”

We experimentally confirmed that the steep subthreshold slope (SS) device “PN body-tied silicon-on-insulator (SOI) field-effect transistor” can reduce the short-circuit current of a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) inverter. When the NMOS and PMOS steep SS positions overlap, they exhibit nearly right-angled transfer characteristics compared to conventional SOI CMOS. In this situation, the short-circuit current was also observed to be very small. This result confirms the possibility of achieving nearly zero short-circuit current in devices with steep SS.