Active thermal-electronic devices based on heat-sensitive metal-insulator-transition resistor elements

Abstract

New active thermal-electronic device family is proposed. These devices operate by means of thermal (or hot electron) coupling between adjacent domains containing heating (input) and thermally sensitive (output) elements. The theoretical background, basic equations and comparison with the conventional electron devices are the main subject of this work. According to the theoretical assumptions the realization of the thermal-electronic device needs a very sensitive output element i.e. temperature sensor. Among others, the metal-insulator transition (MIT) based resistor fulfills this requirement. The MIT resistor itself has got thyristor-like I–V characteristics due to solely the high electric field, or Joule heating induced extremely strong step-like resistance drop at a given temperature. Using thermally coupled MIT and/or other resistors it is possible to build a special device, namely phonsistor (=phonon transistor). This device consists of only bulk type intrinsic domains, containing significantly fewer regions, junctions, depleted layers, surfaces and interfaces compared to conventional electron devices. Thus, these devices can be integrated together with each other and with conventional CMOS, forming, for example, thermal-electronic logic circuit (TELC) for the More-Than-Moore concept devices.