Geometric diode, applications and method

A geometric diode, comprising:

• a device body formed from an electrically conductive material having an equilibrium mobile charge density, and the device body is formed having a device surface configuration, said material further being characterized by a charge carrier mean free path having a mean free path length and said device body having a device size that is selected based on said mean free path length;
• and
• at least a pair of first and second electrodes defined on the device body such that the device body serves as an electrically conductive path between the first and second electrodes wherein the electrically conductive path is delimited by the device surface configuration and the device surface configuration is physically asymmetric with respect to a forward flow of current in a forward direction from the first electrode to the second electrode as compared to a reverse current flow in an reverse direction from the second electrode to the first electrode such that a magnitude of the current between the first electrode and the second electrode, as a function of a voltage between the pair of electrodes, is different in the forward direction from that in the reverse direction without a need for the formation of a depletion layer in the electrically conductive material to produce the difference in current magnitude and the geometric diode is configured to respond to an applied frequency up to at least 1015 hertz.

A geometric diode, comprising:

• a device body formed from an electrically conductive material having an equilibrium mobile charge density, and the device body is formed having a device surface configuration, said material further being characterized by a charge carrier mean free path having a mean free path length and said device body having a device size that is selected based on said mean free path length;
• and
• at least a pair of first and second electrodes defined on the device body such that the device body serves as an electrically conductive path between the first and second electrodes and configured with an impedance between said pair of electrodes in a range from 10 to 10,000 ohms wherein the electrically conductive path is delimited by the device surface configuration and the device surface configuration is physically asymmetric with respect to a forward flow of current in a forward direction from the first electrode to the second electrode as compared to a reverse current flow in an reverse direction from the second electrode to the first electrode such that a magnitude of the current between the first electrode and the second electrode, as a function of a voltage between the pair of electrodes, is different in the forward direction from that in the reverse direction without a need for the formation of a depletion layer in the electrically conductive material to produce the difference in current magnitude.

A method, comprising:

• forming a device body from an electrically conductive material having an equilibrium mobile charge density and having a device surface configuration, said material being characterized by a charge carrier mean free path having a mean free path length;
• selecting a device size for the device body based on said mean free path length;
• and
• defining at least a pair of first and second electrodes on the device body such that the device body serves as an electrically conductive path between the first and second electrodes wherein the electrically conductive path is delimited by the device surface configuration and is configured with an impedance between said pair of electrodes in a range from 10 to 10,000 ohms, and the device surface configuration is physically asymmetric with respect to a forward flow of current in a forward direction from the first electrode to the second electrode as compared to a reverse current flow in an reverse direction from the second electrode to the first electrode such that a magnitude of the current between the first electrode and the second electrode, as a function of a voltage between the pair of electrodes, is different in the forward direction from that in the reverse direction without a need for the formation of a depletion layer in the electrically conductive material to produce the difference in current magnitude.