The structure and the fabrication methods herein implement a fully depleted, recessed gate silicon-on-insulator (SOI) transistor with reduced access resistance, reduced on-current variability, and strain-increased performance. This transistor is based on an SOI substrate that has an epitaxially grown sandwich of SiGe and Si layers that are incorporated in the sources and drains of the transistors. Assuming a metal gate last complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology and using the sidewall spacers as a hard mask, a recess under the sacrificial gate reaching all the way through the SiGe layer is created, and the high-K gate stack and metal gate are formed within that recess. The remaining Si region, having a precisely controlled thickness, is the fully depleted channel.