The Penn State Research Foundation

Unsuk Heo

Suman Datta

Vijaykrishnan Narayanan

Alexandre Schmid

Xueqing Li

Huichu Liu

Ramesh Vaddi

Mahsa Shoaran

Moon Seok Kim

Disclosed are low power electronic devices configured to exploit the sub-threshold swing, unidirectional tunneling, and low-voltage operation of steep slope-tunnel tunnel field-effect transistors (TFET) to improve power-conversion efficiency and power-efficiency of electrical systems incorporating the TFET as an electrical component to perform energy harvesting, signal processing, and related operations. The devices include a HTFET-based rectifier having various topologies, a HTFET-based DC-DC charge pump converter, a HTFET-based amplifier having an amplifier circuit including a telescopic operational transconductance amplifier, and a HTFET-based SAR A/D converter having a HTFET-based transmission gate DFF. Any one of the devices may be used to generate a RF-powered system with improved power conversion efficiencies of power harvesters and power efficiencies of processing components within the system.

Low power nanoelectronics

Growing community of inventors

State College, PA, United States of America

Unsuk Heo