Drive-Current-Free Switch With Internal Transduction in a Magneto Piezo-Electronic Transistor

In response to the challenges of clock speed promotion and power consumption in digital switches, a concept of internal transduction, wherein voltage is transduced to a state internal to the device, which is gated and then transduced back to voltage, was once proposed and highlighted. So far, no embodiments have been demonstrated to perform at a level that would make it competitive with the conventional field-effect transistors moving forward. Here, this natural next step is pursued, and a new method is utilized to transduce an acoustic pulse back to the voltage by magneto piezo-electronic transistors (PETs). These devices provide electric-field control of magnetization in order to change the resistance of the anisotropic magnetic films. Over the course of theoretical and experimental study, the film properties, electric-field manipulation performances, and parameter optimizations are explored and analyzed. The fabricated devices stably achieve a nanosecond switch in a 10-kV/cm electric field with free drive current. In addition, the linear response region is potentially working as a sensor or an actuator. On the basis of this paper, a miniaturized magneto PET is designed and fabricated, in the expectation of speeding up the development of free-current-driven transistors with fast response and low power while scaling down.