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:
Oct. 31, 1989
Filed:
Apr. 19, 1985
Mark A Reed, Dallas, TX (US);
Gary A Frazier, Garland, TX (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
Optically pumped coupled quantum well devices are disclosed. The devices store bits as carrier packets in depressions in the conduction and/or valence band(s) of a single crystal; the band between the depressions is sloped in a common direction which provides unidirectionality. The carrier packets are shifted from depression to depression by optically exciting the carriers and relying on the arrangement of depressions and band slopes; the excitation is conveniently performed by laser illumination. The depressions may be sufficiently small to discretize the energy levels and thereby permit the partitioning of the depressions into groups with each group having depressions of substantially the same energy level structure. The carriers in depressions of one group can then be selectively excited by illumination with a laser or narrow band monochromatic incoherent light source tuned to the energy level structure; this allows multiphase operation of the shifting function.