4.6 Article

There is Plenty of Room for THz Tunneling Electron Devices Beyond the Transit Time Limit

Journal

IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS
Volume 42, Issue 2, Pages 224-227

Publisher

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/LED.2021.3049229

Keywords

Time-frequency analysis; Electric potential; Resonant frequency; Mathematical model; High frequency; Resonant tunneling devices; Frequency modulation; Displacement current; Landauer model; resonant tunneling diode; THz technologies

Funding

  1. Spain's Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (MCIU) [Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI)/Fondo Europeo de Dessarollo Regional (FEDER), European Union (EU)] [RTI2018-097876-B-C21]
  2. Generalitat de Catalunya
  3. FEDER [001-P001644]
  4. Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR 196MARIE
  5. European Union [881603, 765426]

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A novel time-dependent displacement current coefficient is proposed to replace the traditional transmission coefficient for frequencies above a certain limit. The study shows that tunneling electron devices exhibit intrinsic nonlinearity at high frequencies, leading to potential advantages in THz applications.
The traditional transmission coefficient present in the original Landauer formulation, which is valid for quasi-static scenarios with working frequencies below the inverse of the electron transit time, is substituted by a novel time-dependent displacement current coefficient valid for frequencies above this limit. Our model captures in a simple way the displacement current component of the total current, which at frequencies larger than the inverse of the electron transit time can be more relevant than the particle component. The proposed model is applied to compute the response of a resonant tunneling diode from 10 GHz up to 5 THz. We show that tunneling electron devices are intrinsically nonlinear at such high frequencies, even under small-signal conditions, due to memory effects related to the displacement current. We show that these intrinsic nonlinearities (anharmonicities) represent an advantage, rather than a drawback, as they open the path for tunneling devices in many THz applications, and avoid further device downscaling.

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