" This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."
The objective of this research is to design and construct a self-aligned tunnel logic device will consume less power in the off-state and require less switching power for device turn-on. The approach will be to use simulations to determine the appropriate band-engineered heterostructures, implement the heterostructures with metallorganic chemical vapor deposition, develop the etching and spacer techniques needed to fabricate the 3D device, and to fabricate the devices for physical and electrical characterization. This work is innovative in the use of 3D III-V structures and utilization of self-aligned processes to fabricate the complex 3D device.
Intellectual Merit The amount of energy used by the world?s electronic devices in the passive state is staggeringly excessive. The novel concepts implemented in this work will result in a reduction of passive energy consumption by several orders of magnitude making it a ?green? transistor for its energy saving nature. Thus this research is transformative both in its divergent nature from CMOS and in its potential environmental impact.
Broader Impact The most significant broad impact of this work is in the energy savings that can be realized by the introduction of this passive power device. In addition, this project will also support the PI summer effort in a ?Too Cool for School? outreach program designed to reach those intelligent kids whose peer-pressure culture has turned them away from science education. By demonstrating to intelligent underachievers the cool-factors of nanotechnology, the PI hopes to sway them toward the culture of academic achievement.
