Transmission Engineering as a Route to Subthermal Switching

The physics of low subthreshold devices is interpreted in terms of a gate-dependent change in their mode-averaged transmission function, in addition to a capacitive shift in their overall mode spectrum. Accordingly, we explore a variety of subthermal switches that alter the bandwidth, bandgap or amplitude of the transmission, and combinations thereof. The Landauer theory for current flow provides a convenient way to derive the subthreshold swing in each case analytically and suggests ways to beat the Boltzmann limit.