MUNICH, Germany Researchers from the Nanoelectronic Materials Laboratory (NamLab) based in Dresden (Germany) have created an electronic device that goes without dopants. The device gets its switching characteristics by means of electric fields. With its high electron mobility, it could eventually be used in printable electronics.
Printable electronics (or organic, or anorganic electronics, as this technology also is called) hitherto has a major problem that prevents its use in circuits more complex than, for instance, RFID tags. The reason is that the semiconducting materials used in printable electronics typically suffer from very poor charge carrier mobility frequencies higher than a few kilohertz are not possible.
The NamLab researchers now have created a kind of field effect transistor that could be produced using an inkjet process, says NamLab researcher Walter Weber. The device is based on silicon nanowires with dimensions of up to 3 nanometers.
In its electric behavior, the device is similar to a field effect transistor. Unlike known types such as p- or n-FETs however the polarity is determined not at design or production time but can be altered in the field by means of electric fields, Weber explained. For this reason, the researchers have baptized the new device 'FET with tunable polarity'.
Equipped with two gate electrodes instead of just one as is the case with traditional FET types, the conductance is primarily controlled by the injection of charge carriers through the Schottky contacts.
Presently the NamLab has created a demonstrator with simple inverter functionality. While it appears that a possible field of application could be printable electronics, it is yet unclear if the novel device eventually could compete against other established semiconductor technologies. "We are not aiming at CMOS CMOS simply has a development advantage of more than 20 years," Weber explained.
Industrial implementation could be expected in some five years, he said.
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