Dielectric diode, fabrication thereof, and charge store memory therewith

Abstract

Abstract A dielectric diode is provided in accordance with the principles of this invention. The dielectric diode is in the form of a capacitor wherein one of the electrodes has a high contact barrier, e.g., 4 electron-volts, and the other has a low contact barrier, e.g., 1 electron-volt, giving the resulting structure a diode behavior. Illustratively, the electrode at the low contact barrier comprises a valve metal or a very reactive metal which has been anodized or oxidized to provide a layer region with a given concentration of positive ions. The resulting metal oxide is covered with a wide band gap insulator such as SiO 2 . The composite contact barrier from the conductor to the insulator is typically less than 1 eV and results from the transition layer region between the conductor electrode and the insulator layer. The wide gap insulator layer is covered on the opposite surface with another electrode which has a high contact barrier. Electronic current will tunnel easily from the first electrode into the insulator layer via the composite contact barrier and then will be collected by the second electrode as a relatively large tunnel current. However, the tunnel current from the second electrode, through the insulator and to the first electrode is relatively quite small at electric fields less than 10 6 volts/cm. A dielectric diode provided in accordance with the principles of this invention can be used to charge and discharge a capacitor, forming a memory cell. The charge on the memory capacitor can be sensed by a field effect transistor.

Inventors

• 👤 Thomas Herman DiStefano

Bibliographic Details