SINGLE CHARGE CARRIER TRANSISTOR, METHOD OF HOLDING A CHARGE CARRIER WITHIN A QUANTUM DOT, AND METHOD OF DETECTION

摘要

A single electron on hole field effect transistor fabricated from a narrow band gap semiconductor. The transistor is such that the valence and conduction bands have sufficiently similar energy levels such that a top region of the valence band at one point (37), e.g. under a gate electrode (34), within the current path of the transistor can be forced to be higher than the bottom region of the conduction band at another point within the transistor, allowing Zener tunnelling to occur. The transistor is fabricated from semiconductors with band gaps narrow enough to allow this to occur, for instance InSb and InAISb, CdTe and CdxHg1-xTe.