The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 23, 1987
Filed:
Nov. 15, 1985
Christoph S Harder, Zurich, CH;
Hans P Wolf, Zurich, CH;
Werner Baechtold, Langnau, CH;
Pierre L Gueret, Richterswil, CH;
Alexis Baratoff, Schonenberg, CH;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The transistor comprises two electrodes, (source (22) and drain (23), with a semiconductor tunnel channel (21A, 21B) arranged therebetween. A gate (24) for applying control signals is coupled to the channel. The semiconductor channel consists of a plurality of regions differing in their current transfer characteristics: contact regions (21c), connected to the source and drain electrodes, and a tunneling region (21t) arranged between the contact regions. The energy of free carriers in the contact regions differs from the energy of the conduction band or the valence band of the tunneling region which forms a low energy tunnel barrier the height (.DELTA.E) of which can be modified by control signals applied to the gate. The operating temperature of the device is kept sufficiently low to have the tunnel current through the barrier outweigh currents of thermionically excited carriers.