Low temperature tunnel diode for negative differential resistance

Abstract

Highly-doped narrow bandgap materials, which may be nearly metallic at room temperature, may behave as semiconductor materials with high-mobility carriers when the carriers are cooled to a low temperature, e.g., below 250 Kelvin. In such low temperature environments, materials with narrower bandgaps may be used to form tunnel diodes. For example, one or both of the n-doped and p-doped regions may include a material with a bandgap of less than 0.5 eV. The materials used may have a high number of carriers, leading to relatively high currents, and better performance compared to previous room-temperature tunnel diodes using silicon or other standard semiconductor materials. For example, materials for forming tunnel diodes for operation at low temperature may be degenerately doped, with dopant concentrations of at least 1018 cm−3 or 1019 cm−3.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.