Tunneling Devices and Circuits

Alan C. Seabaugh,
Professor, Electrical Engineering,
Associate Director, Center for Nano Science and Technology,
Department of Electrical Engineering,
266 Fitzpatrick Hall,
University of Notre Dame,
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5567,
[email protected],
www.nd.edu/~nano
ABSTRACT: Quantum mechanical tunneling yields a broad range of device phenomena at room temperature, which are widely used today. Flash memory technology has become the most pervasive tunneling phenomenon to be commercially developed. Tunneling field emitters find applications in displays and electron beam emitters, and scanning probe tunneling tips are increasingly used to image and analyze devices and structures at the nanometer scale. There are a number of other tunneling device phenomena, e.g. Zener tunneling, interband tunneling, and resonant tunneling which hold promise for low power transistors, sensors, and circuits. This talk will explore recent progress in the development of tunneling-augmented transistor technologies, circuits, and low-subthreshold swing tunnel transistors. Circuits to be discussed exploit the negative differential resistance of the tunnel diode (InP, Si, SiGe, and Ge) in low-power high-speed differential comparators, frequency translators, and wireless sensor applications.
BIO: Alan Seabaugh received the Ph. D. in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 1985. His current research interests include tunneling and high-performance devices and circuits, nanofabrication, nanoelectromechanical devices, and strain engineering. He joined the University of Notre Dame in August of 1999 as Professor of Electrical Engineering following positions at the National Bureau of Standards (1979-1986), Texas Instruments Incorporated (1986-1997), and Raytheon Systems Company (1997-1999). He was named TI Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 1997 and Raytheon Senior Fellow in 1999. He has authored/coauthored more than 150 papers and holds 22 U.S. patents. He received outstanding teacher awards from the University of Texas at Dallas and Notre Dame in 1990 and 2001, respectively. He a Fellow of the IEEE, Associate Director of the Center for Nano Science and Technology, and a member of the American Physical Society.