Organometallic halide perovskites attract strong interests for their high photoresponsivity and solar cell efficiency. However, there was no systematic study of their power-and frequencydependent photoresponsivity. We identified two different powerdependent photoresponse types in methylammonium lead iodide perovskite (MAPbI 3 ) photodetectors. In the first type, the photoresponse remains constant from 5 Hz to 800 MHz. In the second type, absorption of a single photon can generate a persistent photoconductivity of 30 pA under an applied electric field of 2.5 × 10 4 V/ cm. Additional absorbed photons, up to 8, linearly increase the persistent photoconductivity, which saturates with the absorption of more than 10 photons. This is different than single-photon avalanche detectors (SPADs) because the single-photon response is persistent as long as the device is under bias, providing unique opportunities for novel electronic and photonic devices such as analogue memories for neuromorphic computing. We propose an avalanche-like process for iodine ions and estimate that absorption of a single 0.38 aJ photon triggers the motion of 10 8−9 ions, resulting in accumulations of ions and charged vacancies at the MAPbI 3 /electrode interfaces to cause the band bending and change of electric material properties. We have made the first observation that single-digit photon absorption can alter the macroscopic electric and optoelectronic properties of a perovskite thin film.

No abstract

Since impact ionization was observed in semiconductors over half a century ago, avalanche photodiodes (APDs) using impact ionization in a fashion of chain reaction have been the most sensitive semiconductor photodetectors. However, APDs have relatively high excess noise, a limited gain-bandwidth product, and high operation voltage, presenting a need for alternative signal amplification mechanisms of superior properties. As an amplification mechanism, the cycling excitation process (CEP) was recently reported in a silicon p-n junction with subtle control and balance of the impurity levels and profiles. Realizing that CEP effect depends on Auger excitation involving localized states, we made the counter intuitive hypothesis that disordered materials, such as amorphous silicon, with their abundant localized states, can produce strong CEP effects with high gain and speed at low noise, despite their extremely low mobility and large number of defects. Here, we demonstrate an amorphous silicon low noise photodiode with gain-bandwidth product of over 2 THz, based on a very simple structure. This work will impact a wide range of applications involving optical detection because amorphous silicon, as the primary gain medium, is a low-cost, easy-to-process material that can be formed on many kinds of rigid or flexible substrates.

No abstract

We present a method, Transient Induced Molecular Electronic Spectroscopy (TIMES), to detect protein-ligand interactions without any protein engineering or chemical modification. We developed a physics model for the TIMES signal and mathematically formulated the problem to attain physical insight of protein-ligand interactions without any disturbances by molecular probes, fluorescent labels, or immobilization of molecules. To demonstrate the functionality of this method, we have used the TIMES signals to find the dissociation constants for the affinity of reactions, the shear-stress dependent adsorption time of molecules on surface, and other interesting features of protein-ligand interaction in native conditions. As a unique tool, TIMES offers a simple and effective method to investigate fundamental protein chemistry and drug discoveries.

Signal amplification, performed by transistor amplifiers with its merit rated by the efficiency and noise characteristics, is ubiquitous in all electronic systems. Because of transistor thermal noise, an intrinsic signal amplification mechanism, impact ionization was sought after to complement the limits of transistor amplifiers. However, due to the high operation voltage (30-200 V typically), low power efficiency, limited scalability, and, above all, rapidly increasing excess noise with amplification factor, impact ionization has been out of favor for most electronic systems except for a few applications such as avalanche photodetectors and single-photon Geiger detectors. Here, we report an internal signal amplification mechanism based on the principle of the phonon-assisted cycling excitation process (CEP). Si devices using this concept show ultrahigh gain, low operation voltage, CMOS compatibility, and, above all, quantum limit noise performance that is 30 times lower than devices using impact ionization. Established on a unique physical effect of attractive properties, CEP-based devices can potentially revolutionize the fields of semiconductor electronics.

We investigatedCapacitance-Voltage (C-V) characteristics of the Depletion Mode Buried Channel InGaAs/InAs Quantum Well FET by using Self-Consistent method incorporating Quantum Mechanical (QM) effects. Though the experimental results of C-V for enhancement type device is available in recent literature, a complete characterization of electrostatic property of depletion type Buried Channel Quantum Well FET (QWFET) structure is yet to be done. C-V characteristics of the device is studied with the variation of three important process parameters: Indium (In) composition, gate dielectric and oxide thickness. We observed that inversion capacitance and ballistic current tend to increase with the increase in Indium (In) content in InGaAs barrier layer.

In this paper, Capacitance-Voltage (C-V) characteristics and direct tunneling (DT) gate leakage current of antimonide based surface channel MOSFET were investigated. Self-consistent method was applied by solving coupled Schrödinger-Poisson equation taking wave function penetration and strain effects into account. Experimental I-V and gate leakage characteristic for p-channel InxGa1-xSb MOSFETs are available in recent literature. However, a selfconsistent simulation of C-V characterization and direct tunneling gate leakage current is yet to be done for both nchannel and p-channel InxGa1-xSb surface channel MOSFETs. We studied the variation of C-V characteristics and gate leakage current with some important process parameters like oxide thickness, channel composition, channel thickness and temperature for n-channel MOSFET in this work. Device performance should improve as compressive strain increases in channel. Our simulation results validate this phenomenon as ballistic current increases and gate leakage current decreases with the increase in compressive strain. We also compared the device performance by replacing InxGa1-xSb with InxGa1-xAs in channel of the structure. Simulation results show that performance is much better with this replacement.I.