Research on Functional Devices Utilizing Single Electron Tunneling Phenomena

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

(1) Using a Monte Carlo circuit simulator, we investigated various device structures with the use of single electron tunneling (SET) phenomena. The decrease of tunnel resistance is essential to ensure high current drivabiltiy of SET devices but leads to circuit malfunctions due to co-tunneling effect. We demonstrated that there exists a suitable tunneling value depending on circuit scale.(2) We proposed a scaling rule for SET devices. Although the down-scaling of capacitors results in the increase of drain current and applied voltage, we showed that junction-temperature-rise due to Joule heat may prohibit their normal operation.(3) We demonstrated that "multi-electron" logic instead of "single-electron" is suitable for stable SET circuit operation since electronic charge in a rather large load capacitor screens electron in a control node which is confirmed by simulations of inverter chain circuits. We found that the best load capacitor would be a "15-electron" logic from a view point of a trade-off between switching time and dissipation power.(4) We established basic process technologies utilizing our EB direct writing to fabricate SET devices on GaAs/AlGaAs hetero-structures.