Nanoscale Complementary Vacuum Field Emission Transistor

Nanoscale vacuum channel transistors based on field emission have gained attention recently, and device demonstrations using various material systems have been reported. Whereas solid-state electronics leverages n- and p-type semiconductors for complementary logic circuits, vacuum electronics uses only electron transport as no p-type vacuum devices exist. Here, we propose a complementary vacuum field emission transistor (VFET) using electron-only field emission mechanism. By combining the rectifying characteristics of the field emission current due to an asymmetric source and drain (cathode and anode) structure and the source-to-drain gap modulation by nanoelectromechanical actuation due to the gate voltage, we configured the VFET to turn on only when a high positive (negative) voltage is applied to both the gate and drain for n-type (p-type) VFET. The complementary devices are connected in series to configure an inverter as a representative logic gate to demonstrate the possibilities.