A comprehensive study of bistable gated bipolar device

Bistable gated bipolar (BGB) devices, a novel negative differential resistance (NDR) device, is investigated in this paper. Experimental demonstration for both n-channel and p-channel devices is carried out in a partially depleted silicon-on-insulator technology. The temperature dependence of its NDR characteristics is measured and found to be in good agreement with analytical models. A feasible scheme is proposed to implement this device in scaled CMOS technologies. As the basic principle for applications, the measured hysteresis characteristic of a storage cell utilizing the BGB device is reported for the first time. Potential applications for logic and memory are also discussed