Negative differential conductance at room temperature in three-terminal silicon surface junction tunneling device

Negative differential conductance based on forward biased band-to-band tunneling is demonstrated at room temperature in a three-terminal silicon surface junction tunneling device. The device is fabricated on silicon dioxide to achieve an extremely small bulk leakage current together with a sharp drain impurity profile. A new device structure, in which the active tunneling junction is away from the field isolation, is also employed to totally eliminate excess tunneling current at the field oxide corner. It is observed that the tunneling current is largely controlled by the gate bias which modulates the tunneling distance. This functional device can be easily implemented into the fabrication process for silicon ultralarge scale integrated circuits, and is expected to be a useful post complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor device in future silicon technology. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.