Sub-Thermionic Switching in a Negative-Capacitance Bandgap-Change Field-Effect Transistor

Overcoming the approximately 60 mV/dec Boltzmann limit of the subthreshold swing remains a central challenge for low-power nanoelectronics. Negative-capacitance field-effect transistors address it by amplifying the channel potential, but their effectiveness is constrained by capacitance matching and by the quantum capacitance of conventional channels. Here we model a negative-capacitance bandgap-change field-effect transistor (NC-BCFET), in which the ferroelectric gate stack instead amplifies the electric field that opens the bandgap of the channel, using experimentally proven materials: bilayer graphene as a channel with an electrically tunable bandgap and Al 0.55 Sc 0.45 N as the negative-capacitance ferroelectric. Our self-consistent framework couples a four-band tight-binding Hamiltonian with GW-corrected screening, a quasistatic Landau--Devonshire ferroelectric response, and ballistic Landauer--Büttiker transport. Negative capacitance amplifies the interlayer potential difference, compressing the switching window 37-fold relative to a dielectric-gated control. At 300 K, the optimized NC-BCFET achieves a subthreshold swing of 15 mV/dec, four times below the Boltzmann limit, improving to 2.5 mV/dec at 100 K. The room-temperature on/off ratio is limited to about 10 squared by the bandgap of bilayer graphene. The concept extends directly to materials with larger field-tunable bandgaps, where deep subthermionic switching and high on/off ratios can be achieved together at room temperature.