Nature publishes article about Professor Kaustav B
Post# of 22456
December 3rd, 2015
The fundamentally new transistor employs atomically-thin semiconducting channel material and quantum mechanical tunneling, operates at a supply voltage of only 0.1 V with high ON/OFF current ratio, and lowers power dissipation by over 90% compared to the state-of-the-art silicon transistors
Members from ECE’s Nanoelectronics Research Lab, in collaboration with materials researchers at Rice University, have designed and demonstrated a breakthrough tunnel-field-effect-transistor (TFET) that displays very steep turn-on characteristics (or low subthreshold swing) leading to switching operation at only 0.1 V, and reduces power dissipation by more than 90% compared to conventional field-effect transistors (MOSFETs).
The new transistor allows highly efficient quantum mechanical phenomenon of band-to-band tunneling by exploiting the electronic properties of a judiciously designed vertical van der Waals heterostructure formed with germanium acting as source and substrate, and a two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor- molybdenum disulphide or MoS2 as the channel material.
The newly demonstrated TFET, reported in Nature, is the first device to satisfy the international technology roadmap for semiconductors (ITRS) specifications for tunnel-FETs at a low voltage of 0.1 V and could potentially revolutionize future electronics, including low-power computing, RF/analog circuits, as well as low-power biosensors and gas sensors. Professor Banerjee who directs the Nanoelectronics Research Lab, led this research.
http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/news/?i=6023