Photoemission-based microelectronic devices.
The vast majority of modern microelectronic devices rely on carriers within semiconductors due to their integrability. Therefore, the performance of these devices is limited due to natural semiconductor properties such as band gap and electron velocity. Replacing the semiconductor channel in conventional microelectronic devices with a gas or vacuum channel may scale their speed, wavelength and power beyond what is available today. However, liberating electrons into gas/vacuum in a practical microelectronic device is quite challenging. It often requires heating, applying high voltages, or using lasers with short wavelengths or high powers. Here, we show that the interaction between an engineered resonant surface and a low-power infrared laser can cause enough photoemission via electron tunnelling to implement feasible microelectronic devices such as transistors, switches and modulators. The proposed photoemission-based devices benefit from the advantages of gas-plasma/vacuum electronic devices while preserving the integrability of semiconductor-based devices.
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92098-0407, USA.
Ebrahim
E
Forati
Department of NanoEngineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92098-0448, USA.
Tyler J
TJ
Dill
Department of NanoEngineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92098-0448, USA.
Andrea R
AR
Tao
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92098-0407, USA.
Dan
D
Sievenpiper