Design and demonstration of new operation mode multi-emitter resonant tunneling hot electron transistors for one-transistor-SRAM-cell and peripheral logic circuitry

We have designed and developed a new read/write operation mode one-transistor-SRAM-cell and its peripheral circuits using InGaAs multi-emitter resonant tunneling hot electron transistors (ME-RHETs). A new mode for write operation, based on the monostable-bistable transition of the resonant tunneling emitter and the bias-dependent current gain, is proposed to improve operating margins. To reduce the standby power consumption of a memory cell and increase current driving capability for peripheral circuits simultaneously, the ME-RHET structure is designed so as to use the first resonant state for the memory cell and the second resonant state for peripheral circuits. We have also designed a full set of SRAM components using the ME-RHETs, including cell array, decoder and a read/write circuit. We have succeeded in fabricating these circuits and demonstrated the correct read/write operation of the cell array combined with read/write circuits at 77K.