SiGe resonant tunneling hot carrier transistor

A three-terminal hot hole transistor was fabricated using a Si-GeSi-Si double-barrier resonant tunneling structure as an emitter with a thin base in order to obtain near-ballistic transport. The collector current shows a negative differential resistance (NDR) and strongly depends on the emitter-base voltage. In the current control mode, a typical bipolar-transistor-like current-voltage characteristic is obtained. The injected carriers are ballistically transferred from the emitter to the collector. Before breakdown the transfer ratio of the injected carriers is almost unity. It is noted that an operating condition can be designed by sweeping the input bias around the NDR region. The device exhibits a controllable negative differential resistance as shown in the current-voltage characteristics. Due to the high-speed nature of the tunneling process and negative differential resistance, integration of this device into Si technology could find applications in the areas of high-speed digital circuits, frequency multipliers, and tunable oscillators/amplifiers.