A novel mode of current switching dependent on activated charge transport

Abstract

We demonstrate a fully printed transistor with a planar triode geometry, using nanoparticulate silicon as the semiconductor material, which has a unique mode of operation as an electrically controlled two-way (double throw) switch. A signal applied to the base changes the direction of the current from between the collector and base to between the base and emitter. We further show that the switching characteristic results from the activated charge transport in the semiconductor material, and that it is independent of the dominant carrier type in the semiconductor and the nature of the junction between the semiconductor and the three contacts. The same equivalent circuit, and hence similar device characteristics, can be produced using any other material combination with non-linear current-voltage characteristics, such as a suitable combination of semiconducting and conducting materials, such that a Schottky junction is present at all three contacts. C 2013 Author(s)

Switching alternating current (AC) using a fully screen‐printed current‐driven transistor

“…5 a and b present the current–current and current–voltage transfer characteristic for the asymmetric transistors measured under the conditions specified above, for collector bias of V = 90 V and V = 100 V. Fig. 5 b shows a similar result to that observed for the DC operation [23]. It can be clearly observed from the IV curves that, for 90 and 100 V collector bias voltages, the differential conductance presented a negative gradient and decreases almost exponentially until the switching threshold voltage, where the gradient became approximately zero.…”

“…From previous studies [23], we described the power switching transistors presented here as a triangle of varistors, where each varistor could further be modelled by a system of two diodes placed back to back as shown in Fig. 6 b .…”

“…The printed active layer is illustrated (shaded green in Fig. 1); the active silicon was chosen over their general switching capability as they were already demonstrated as switches in logic gates [19,20,23,24]. For this study, the powdered nanostructured silicon particles were produced from highly doped p-type silicon wafers (Siegert Wafer GmbH, Germany), with an initial resistivity ρ < 0.002 Ωm, by high energy milling for 5 h. The milled p-doped silicon was chosen for this study, due to their electrical characteristics, which present a double-diode behaviour in their transfer characteristics.…”

“…The fully printed current switching transistor (CST) presented in this work has been demonstrated to operate as high power switches for DC, and logic gates at room and cryogenic environment [7, 23, 24]. This device is a promising candidate for high‐voltage AC switching due to its being a majority carrier device with an operation mechanism relying only on the energy provided to the carriers.…”

Investigation of surface topology of printed nanoparticle layers using wide-angle low-Qscattering

“…The silicon nanoparticles used in this experiment were obtained from P-type wafers and 2503-grade silicon milled for 5 and 3 h, respectively, using high-energy milling (Britton & Hä rting, 2006). These are referred to as P-Si and M-Si, respectively, and are similar to those used in the production of printed electronics components such as temperature sensors (Mä nnl et al, 2013), field effect transistors (Hä rting et al, 2009) and current switching transistors (Britton et al, 2013). A nominally silicon nanopowder (denoted as I-Si) produced by silane pyrolysis obtained from MTI Corporation (Richmond, CA, USA) was also investigated for comparison.…”