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, 2009
Filed:
Oct. 20, 2005
Abraham Rudolf Balkenende, Eindhoven, NL;
Erik Petrus Antonius Maria Bakkers, Eindhoven, NL;
Louis Felix Feiner, Eindhoven, NL;
Abraham Rudolf Balkenende, Eindhoven, NL;
Erik Petrus Antonius Maria Bakkers, Eindhoven, NL;
Louis Felix Feiner, Eindhoven, NL;
Philips Lumiled Lighting Co., LLC, San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device in which energy band gap can be reversibly varied. An idea of the present invention is to provide a device, which is based on a semiconducting material () in mechanical contact with a material that exhibits a reversible volume change when properly addressed, e.g. a phase change material (). The device can, for example, be implemented in light emitting, switching and memory in applications. The semiconducting material can be reversibly strained by applying a local volume expansion to the phase change material. The resulting band gap variation of the semiconducting material can be utilized to tune the color of the light emitted from e.g. an LED or a laser. In other fields of application, contact resistance in semiconductor junctions can be controlled, and this feature is highly advantageous in memories and switches.