Photoemission-based microelectronic devices

Abstract

The vast majority of modern microelectronic devices rely on carriers within semiconductors due to their integrability. Therefore, the performance of these devices is limited due to natural semiconductor properties such as band gap and electron velocity. Replacing the semiconductor channel in conventional microelectronic devices with a gas or vacuum channel may scale their speed, wavelength and power beyond what is available today. However, liberating electrons into gas/vacuum in a practical microelectronic device is quite challenging. It often requires heating, applying high voltages, or using lasers with short wavelengths or high powers. Here, we show that the interaction between an engineered resonant surface and a low-power infrared laser can cause enough photoemission via electron tunnelling to implement feasible microelectronic devices such as transistors, switches and modulators. The proposed photoemission-based devices benefit from the advantages of gas-plasma/vacuum electronic devices while preserving the integrability of semiconductor-based devices.

Electron emission by long and short wavelength lasers: Essentials for the design of plasmonic photocathodes

“…The surface area of the photocathode is around 450 µ m (22 by 22 unit cells with the area of about 1 by 1 micron), and the minimum gap size is 100 nm. As reported in gold (see [6,32]).…”

“…Comparing the the experimental values reported in [6] with Fig. 8, either a higher field enhancement factor (for the static or the laser field) should be considered, or the thermal effect is considerable.…”

Plasmonic nano-arrays for enhanced photoemission and photodetection

“…A 40x40 layout of the periodic unit-cells was fabricated on silicon wafers with a 280 nm thermally grown SiO2 layer to minimize leakage currents through substrate. The silicon wafers had a resistivity above 10000 Ω.cm and the thickness of SiO2 layer is sufficient for proper isolation [21]. We do not expect thermal expansion in our experiment since the electrodes are mechanically coupled to the substrate.…”

Guiding Waves Along an Infinitesimal Line between Impedance Surfaces

“…], LW is attractive for light-matter interaction and chiral quantum processes [21,36]). Moreover, the significant field enhancement and the available air channel at the interface-line can potentially offer simple implementation for micro-plasma and vacuumbased electronic devices [47]. Furthermore, the adopted effective-medium approach allows for forming LWs with reconfigurable pathways [48,40].…”