Simscape® based ultra-fast design exploration: graphene-nanoelectronic circuit case studies

SPICE has been the corner stone of integrated circuit simulation since the 1970s. The device-level options that are available for SPICE/analog simulators to simulate a circuit netlist are typically compact models and/or Verilog-A structural and behavioral models. Though these simulations are very accurate, for large and complex circuits/systems they are extremely slow and even computationally infeasible. Thus, as a paradigm shift of the conventional design simulation flow, this paper presents a complete Simscape®based design and simulation flow for ultra-fast design exploration of graphene based nanoelectronic systems. A behavioral model for a dual gate graphene field effect transistor (GFET) is modeled in Simscape®based on the drift-diffusion conduction mechanism. The kink region of the $$I-V$$I-V characteristic is modeled via a displacement current. For case study design circuits, an all graphene based low noise amplifier and an LC-tank voltage controlled oscillator are presented. The results show that the proposed design alternative to simulate analog circuits and systems is a viable option in addition to the existing SPICE, VHDL-AMS or Verilog-A based flows and can open the way to true device-level system design exploration and optimization. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first ever paper to explore a Simscape®model of a GFET device and design a GFET based radio-frequency circuit using Simscape®.