NEGATIVE DIFFERENTIAL CONDUCTANCE AT ROOM-TEMPERATURE IN 3-TERMINAL SILICON SURFACE JUNCTION TUNNELING DEVICE

Negative differential conductance based on forward biased band-to-band tunneling is demonstrated at room temperature in a three-terminal sil icon surface junction tunneling device. The device is fabricated on si licon dioxide to achieve an extremely small bulk leakage current toget her with a sharp drain impurity profile. A new device structure, in wh ich the active tunneling junction is away from the field isolation, is also employed to totally eliminate excess tunneling current at the fi eld oxide corner. It is observed that the tunneling current is largely controlled by the gate bias which modulates the tunneling distance. T his functional device can be easily implemented into the fabrication p rocess for silicon ultralarge scale integrated circuits, and is expect ed to be a useful post complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor device in future silicon technology. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.