The American Chemical Society (ACS) launched its new journal Applied Electronic Materials this year. One of Boise State’s own research teams landed a spot in the very first issue thanks to their novel work on a new type of transistor.
“The new transistor opens up an exciting avenue of research,” says Dr. Kris Campbell, an associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. The featured work describes an optically-gated transistor developed in the Non-Volatile Memory research lab at Boise State University.
Campbell’s research team includes undergraduate electrical engineering students Randall Bassine and Jeremy Astle and electrical and computer engineering doctoral student Faisal Kabir. Their unique work has led to a patent for Boise State University and has already been licensed by a company hoping to use the technology in their products.
In this work, Dr. Campbell and her team demonstrate that a device comprised of alternating layers of sputtered amorphous chalcogenide materials functions as an optically gated transistor (OGT). The team further demonstrates the OGT in an application as an access transistor for a memristor. The gate of this transistor is optically controlled and therefore, unlike other transistors, needs only two electrically-connected terminals. The transistor is demonstrated to function over an optical wavelength range of 385 - 1200 nm.
Dr. Campbell’s current research interests are in the areas of new electronic memory technologies and human-plant communication via electrical signaling. Learn more about ongoing work online at http://coen.boisestate.edu/kriscampbell/.
An Optically Gated Transistor Composed of Amorphous M + Ge2Se3 (M = Cu or Sn) for Accessing and Continuously Programming a Memristor
Kristy A. Campbell, Randall A. Bassine, Md. Faisal Kabir, and Jeremy Astle
ACS Applied Electronic Materials 2019 1 (1), 96-104
DOI: 10.1021/acsaelm.8b00034
ACS Applied Electronic Materials open access: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsaelm.8b00034