Bistable gated bipolar device

We report a semiconductor device that exhibits a negative differential resistance characteristic. The device has the same structure as metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistors currently used in integrated circuits. Biasing the structure in the subthreshold regime and sweeping the bulk bias results in the negative differential resistance characteristic. The device exhibits a peak valley current ratio of approximately 52 at room temperature while drawing ten nanoampers of current which is of sufficiently low power for ultra-large scale integration (ULSI) applications.