Electronic structure modulation for low-power switching

Abstract

We report the transport characteristics of a novel transistor based on the electronic structure modulation of the channel. The gate voltage-controlled current modulation arises from the bandwidth manipulation of a midgap or a near-midgap state. We show that the transistor exhibits a gain and overcomes the 2.3 kBT/decade thermal limit in the inverse subthreshold slope where kB is the Boltzmann constant. The unique device physics also opens up many novel applications.