Photoemission-based microelectronic devices

Ebrahim Forati (), Tyler J. Dill, Andrea R. Tao and Dan Sievenpiper ()
Additional contact information
Ebrahim Forati: University of California San Diego
Tyler J. Dill: University of California San Diego
Andrea R. Tao: University of California San Diego
Dan Sievenpiper: University of California San Diego

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13399 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms13399

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms13399

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().