Self-gating in an electron Y-branch switch at room temperature

Abstract

The authors have observed a self-gating effect in electron Y-branch switches at room temperature. The devices, with geometrical branch widths smaller than 50nm, were fabricated by electron beam lithography and shallow wet chemical etching from a modulation doped GaAs∕AlGaAs heterostructure with a two-dimensional electron gas approximately 30nm below the surface. The side-gate operation is enhanced by the self-gating effect between the branches. In particular, the differential voltage gain of the Y-branch switch increases approximately quadratically with the bias voltage.