Silicon Cross-coupled Gated Tunneling Diodes

Tunneling-based static random-access memory (SRAM) devices has been developed to fulfill the demands of high density and low power, promoting the performance of SRAMs. However, it has been for a long time that no silicon-based tunneling device with both high peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR) and practicality is available, remaining a gap to be filled. Based on existing work, this manuscript provides the concept of a new silicon-based tunneling device, silicon cross-coupled gated tunneling diode (Si XTD), with a quite simple structure, which is almost completely compatible with the mainstream technology. With TCAD simulations, it has been validated that this type of devices not only exhibit significant negative-differential-resistance (NDR) behavior with PVCRs up to 106, but also possess reasonable process margins. Moreover, SPICE simulation has shown the great potential of such devices to achieve ultralow-power tunneling-based SRAMs with standby power down to 10-12 W.