Product category:
Memory Devices and Modules
News Release from: Toshiba Electronics Europe
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 January 2001
Single-electron transistor at room
temperature
Toshiba has developed a single-electron transistor (SET) circuit of the type essential for future hybrid circuits combining quantum SET devices with conventional electronic devices.
Toshiba has developed a single-electron transistor (SET) circuit of the type essential for future hybrid circuits combining quantum SET devices with conventional electronic devices While small scale and experimental, Toshiba's fully functional SET circuit meets essential requirements: room-temperature operation, a nonvolatile memory function that supports intelligent self-learning and self-development, and ultra-low power operation
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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SET offers a solution at the quantum level, through the precise control of a small number of individual electrons.
The ultra-low power consumption of SET also promises new levels of performance for mobile applications.
SET operates by injecting or ejecting a single electron into or from a dot of silicon, so producing a change in electronic potential.
That change must overcome thermal agitation, making optimised smallness of the dot essential for SET operation at a finite temperature.
For example, operation at room temperature demands a nanometer-scale structure.
This has proved so difficult to achieve that there have been no previous reports of room-temperature operation of SET circuits.
Toshiba has succeeded in fabricating nanometer-scale dots by treating a silicon surface with alkaline-based solutions.
The resulting relief map shows a nanometer-scale alpine landscape, with the peaks providing the desired dots.
Experiments with ultra-thin silicon on an insulator has confirmed the ability to achieve a cluster of nanometer-scale dots, which was used to fabricate single-electron transistors that operate even at room temperature.
In addition to realising an essential fabrication for SET, the work at Toshiba has also achieved the desired memory function, as the circuit can store an electron in the valleys of electronic potential.
This confirms that the SET can operate intelligently by storing information and performing actions based on its instructions.
The SET fabrication process is fully compatible with that of conventional Cmosfet, and Toshiba has successfully realised a hybrid system of SET and Cmosfet on a single chip.
This has provided clear confirmation of the functionality of the chip's simple circuit, its memory operation and of operation based on the information stored in the device.
Toshiba continues to work on and refine the SET, towards the intelligent self-learning and self-development capabilities.
Details of the single-electron transistor, which was performed under the management of R and D Association for Future Electron Devices (FED) in a Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) R and D program supported by New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO), were presented at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco.
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