Material-Engineered DGTFET: An Enhanced Sensitivity Method for Label-Free Biosensing

Authors Pallabi Pahari, Sushanta Kumar Mohapatra, Jitendra Kumar Das
Affiliations

School of Electronics Engineering, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) Deemed to be University, 751024 Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Е-mail pallabi.pahariec@gmail.com
Issue Volume 18, Year 2026, Number 2
Dates Received 02 February 2026; revised manuscript received 17 April 2026; published online 29 April 2026
Citation Pallabi Pahari, Sushanta Kumar Mohapatra, Jitendra Kumar Das, J. Nano- Electron. Phys. 18 No 2, 02018 (2026)
DOI https://doi.org/10.21272/jnep.18(2).02018
PACS Number(s) 73.40.Kp, 73.40.Gk, 73.43.Jn
Keywords ME-DGTFET, GaSb-AlGaAs-GaAs heterostructure, Band-to-band tunnelling, Dielectric and electrostatic modulation sensitivity.
Annotation

This work investigates a Material-Engineered Double Gate Tunnel Field Effect Transistor (ME-DGTFET) engineered for ultra-sensitive, label-free biosensing applications. The suggested structure with n+ pocket dual-layer gate dielectric GaSb-AlGaAs-GaAs heterostructure has been implemented to improve the efficiency of band-to-band tunnelling (BTBT) and electrostatic control. Silvaco-ATLAS was used to run device simulations that took into account non-local BTBT, SRH, Auger and BGN models. The modified DGTFET has a subthreshold swing (SS) of 9.2 mV/dec, an Ion/Ioff ratio of 4 x 1013 and a threshold voltage (Vth) of 0.32 V. These numbers show that it is much better than traditional Si-based designs. Sensitivity analysis with different dielectric constants (K = 5-12) and biomolecular charge densities (Nbio = ± 1 x 1012 C/cm2) showed that higher dielectric constants and positively charged biomolecules greatly improve ON-current and sub-threshold performance. Moreover, complete surface coverage (100 %) increases sensitivity by over twofold in comparison to partial coverage (50 %). So the proposed ME-DGTFET could be a great choice for next-generation biosensing platforms that need low power and high sensitivity.

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