guiding_light
29th June 2007 - 08:33 PM
QUOTE (wbraxtonwilson+Aug 10 2006, 01:27 PM)
Do you think that is the way tunnel diodes work? w.
It is just how dielectric tunneling works
QUOTE
Lamperts law of barrier layer capacitance predicts a non-ohmic behavior for insulators films. The law he developed, and I found to be correct, is that the law is complex, being initaially ohmic then following, a square law I^2 dependence and with thickness following again the ohmic law. As stated, in attempting to obtain bulk double injection in lasers, following the work of Basov in chalcogenides, I found the law true. The trouble is that if one follows that to the end, our present sub-micron FETs will never work. But they do. We are very lucky. I have never seen the follow on from the FET people who undoubtedly have this in hand, and keep it as proprietary technology. wbw
I'd be interested to see this theory.
Besides tunneling, there is also space-charge current to consider.
Enthalpy
30th June 2007 - 12:39 AM
Tunnel diodes: Current flows because the insulating region is thin, like in any tunnel effect. >30 years ago, heavy doping could be used to obtain automatically (though not easily...) a thin depleted zone in a PN junction, showing Tunnel effect. In contrast, it's more recent that insulation layers can be made thin enough to obtain - or be plagued by - tunnel effect.
Any low-voltage Zener diode is in fact a tunnel diode, where avalanche effect isn't important. It's quite logical since it needs several eV to produce a new pair in silicon. Consistently with the absence of avalanche, low-voltage "Zener" diodes make little noise (far less than a bandgap reference, hence useful and used) but have a soft I-V curve.
The diodes usually called Tunnel have (had) one special use: due to misalignment of their bands, their forward current drops with increasing forward voltage (within certain narrow limits, yes). Since this negative dynamic resistance is really fast, the diode was used as an oscillator. At a few GHz, so it's outfashioned now. Have a look at Wiki.
Thin ferroelectric material: What about PVDF?
Promises of ferroelectric components: I'm still waiting! In 1989 or even sooner, people already wanted to make nonvolatile Ram of them. Ramtron still exists, but makes 4kb chips in 2007...
Enthalpy
30th June 2007 - 03:48 PM
And in a thin film, preferably between two metals:
What current density is possible without material wearing?
I don't care whether it's tunnel, thermoemission or voodoo. I want something damned fast and nonlinear.
Enthalpy
5th July 2007 - 09:22 PM
Still looking for an answer!
What current density is possible by tunnel effect in a MIM without material wearing?
wbraxtonwilson
6th July 2007 - 10:35 PM
QUOTE (Enthalpy+Jul 5 2007, 09:22 PM)
Still looking for an answer!
What current density is possible by tunnel effect in a MIM without material wearing?
Enthalpy needs to defeat entropy. That's all. WBW
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