Communications of the ACM
Transistors Minus Semiconductors
A Michigan Technological University research has developed a way to harness tunneling field-effect transistors at room temperature.
Credit: Michigan Technological University
Michigan Technological University professor Yoke Khin Yap has developed a room-temperature approach to harnessing tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs).
He achieved a room-temperature TFET proof-of-concept using iron quantum dots aligned on boron-nitride nanotubes (BNNTs).
Yap's lab is working toward ultra-small flexible electronics that eliminate semiconductors in favor of the more flexible capabilities of metallic quantum dots and isoelectronic crystals. Yap says iron quantum dots (QDs) attached to BNNTs can tunnel from quantum-dot to quantum-dot at ultra-low turn-on voltages. They can switch in the manner that transistors do, but also use a flexible low-power substrate with zero leakage current. The electron also can find its own path around a nanotube with randomly placed dots.
"We already know that the turn-on voltage for a typical QD-BNNT channel can be below 0.1 volts," Yap says. "But for the current proof-of-concept work, it is higher at [about 15 volts] due to the long channel length on our STM–TEM [scanning-tunneling microscope–tunneling electron microscope] holder."
Yap's team observed the same action using gold quantum dots on BNNTs. Yap says the technology could replace semiconductors, as well as be flexible enough to create super-small wearable technologies.
From EE Times
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