SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE WITH TUNABLE ENERGY BAND GAP

摘要

The present invention relates to a semiconductor device in which energy band gap can be reversibly varied. An idea of the present invention is to provide a device, which is based on a semiconducting material (306) in mechanical contact with a material that exhibits a reversible volume change when properly addressed, e.g. a phase change material (307). The device can, for example, be implemented in light emitting, switching and memory in applications. The semiconducting material can be reversibly strained by applying a local volume expansion to the phase change material. The resulting band gap variation of the semiconducting material can be utilized to tune the color of the light emitted from e.g. an LED or a laser. In other fields of application, contact resistance in semiconductor junctions can be controlled, and this feature is highly advantageous in memories and switches.