Energy Consumption, Conversion, and Transfer in Nanometric Field-Effect Transistors (FET) Used in Readout Electronics at Cryogenic Temperatures

Abstract

The energy consumed by electron devices such as field-effect-transistors (FET) in an integrated circuit is mostly used to process different electrical signals. However, a fraction of that energy is also converted into heat that gets transferred throughout the integrated circuit and modifies the local temperature. The modification of the local temperature, which is interpreted as a self-heating mechanism, is a function of different charge carrier scattering mechanisms, the characteristic energy relaxation times for charge carriers, the heat carrier mechanisms, the geometry of the FET, the volume of the integrated circuit, and the composed thermal properties of the integrated circuit and the system package. Besides all those dependencies, the charge and heat transport properties are temperature dependent. All these features make the electrothermodynamic analysis and modeling of low-power cryogenic electron devices a compulsory need. In this work, we introduce an analysis based on experimental results obtained from characterizing FET test structures in the temperature range between 300 K and down to 3.1 K.