Source-Gated Transistors for Versatile Large Area Electronic Circuit Design and Fabrication

Abstract

Source-gated transistors (SGTs) comprise a blocking contact or potential barrier at the source, which control the current. The paper describes how SGTs can be optimized for particular applications and for specific semiconductor material systems. It is shown how the saturation voltage can be designed to be an order of magnitude smaller than in equivalent FETs to give power savings of over 50% for the same current output. The SGT also achieves a better saturation regime, with lower output conductance over a larger range of drain voltages. Flat-panel lighting, remote sensing and signal processing and large-area circuits made using inexpensive but imprecise patterning techniques are some of the applications which could benefit from incorporating these devices.