CMOS-compatible electro-optical SRAM cavity device based on negative differential resistance

Abstract

The impending collapse of Moore-like growth of computational power has spurred the development of alternative computing architectures, such as optical or electro-optical computing. However, many of the current demonstrations in literature are not compatible with the dominant complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology used in large-scale manufacturing today. Here, inspired by the famous Esaki diode demonstrating negative differential resistance (NDR), we show a fully CMOS-compatible electro-optical memory device, based on a new type of NDR diode. This new diode is based on a horizontal PN junction in silicon with a unique layout providing the NDR feature, and we show how it can easily be implemented into a photonic micro-ring resonator to enable a bistable device with a fully optical readout in the telecom regime. Our result is an important stepping stone on the way to new nonlinear electro-optic and neuromorphic computing structures based on this new NDR diode.

Photonic negative differential transistor based on cavity polaritons

“…and σ = {e, c}. Generally, n 0 can be obtained by equation (5). Once n 0 is known, we can obtain other steady-state values, i.e.…”

“…The photonic negative differential transistor (NDT) is an interesting and counterintuitive optical device, which describes the signal field decrease as the applied gate field increases [3]. Analogous to a negative differential resistance [4], the NDT holds great potential for applications such as oscillators, amplifiers, and logic switches [5]. Photons as signal carriers have more advantages than electrons, such as higher transfer speeds, lower power dissipations, less hardware heating, and avoiding crosstalk interference [6,7].…”

2D semiconductors as integrated light sources for plasmonic waveguides

“…Integrated photonic systems are promising to enable the miniaturization of optical systems and measurements to chipscale devices [1][2] , with applications in new quantum devices 2 , ultra high-speed telecommunications platforms 3 , diagnostics 4 , new computing architectures 5 , and more. Integrated systems based on plasmonic waveguiding is particularly interesting for sensing and high-speed telecommunications applications, where the ability of plasmonic confinement of light below the diffraction limit enables single molecule sensing and major reductions in device capacitance for optoelectronic modulators due to greatly reduced device footprint 3 .…”

Temperature‐Dependent Phase Transition in WS2 for Reinforcing Band‐to‐Band Tunneling and Photoreactive Random Access Memory Application

“…The increasing demand for rapid computing speed and higher power efficiency to handle massive data in advanced computing technologies, such as artificial intelligence and internet‐of‐things, [ 1–3 ] has spurred interest in negative differential resistance (NDR) devices. This device has been highlighted for its potential applications in multilevel logic, [ 4–6 ] random‐access memory (RAM), [ 7–9 ] and oscillator systems. [ 10–12 ] The NDR phenomenon exhibits a drastic current drop at a specific voltage range and an N‐shaped current–voltage ( I–V ) curve under an applied bias.…”