Hafnium Dioxide-Based Double-Pole Four-Throw Double-Gate RF CMOS Switch

Established radio-frequency complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (RF CMOS) switch contains MOSFET in its main architecture with 5.0 V of control voltage and requires high value of resistance in circuitry of the transceivers to detect the signal. To avoid the high value of control voltage and resistances, we have designed a novel double-pole four-throw (DP4T) RF switch by using the MOSFET technology and analyzed its performance in terms of drain currents and switching speed in the previous chapters. The reduction in sizing ratio of the gate dielectric, which works as a capacitor in the MOSFET, results in the increase of capacitance and speed of the device. However, this process has reached up to the limit where further reduction of SiO₂ thickness increases the leakage current above the acceptable limit. This problem can be resolved by replacing SiO₂ with materials having high dielectric constants. Hafnium dioxide (also known as Hafnia) is one of them, which has relatively large energy bandgap and a better thermal stability as compared to silicon [1]. It is a leading contender for new high-k gate dielectric films.