A novel analog-to-digital conversion architecture using electron waveguides

An analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion architecture based on the quantized conductance of electron waveguides has been demonstrated. In the scheme, a dual electron waveguide (DWG) device implements a binary quantizer and encoder for one significant bit of resolution. The conductance values of the one and off states in the binary code are 2e/sup 2//h and zero, respectively. By cascading multiple DWG devices, higher order significant bits can be attained. Here the first significant bit and the second significant bit of the analog-to-digital conversion architecture using a DWG device fabricated in an AlGaAs/GaAs modulation-doped heterostructure are shown.<
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