Development of Three-Terminal Atomic
Switches and Related Topics
T. Hasegawa, T. Tsuruoka, Y. Itoh, T. Sakamoto, and M. Aono
Abstract Three-terminal atomic switches control formation and annihilation of a
conductive path between a source and a drain by the electric field applied through a
gate electrode. Advantage of the three-terminal atomic switches to the two-terminal
atomic switches is that a signal line of the three-terminal atomic switches is separated
from a signal line, which increases their controllability especially when used as logic
devices. Three-terminal atomic switches are classified into two types by a species of
controlled ions that form a conductive path. One type controls metal cations, so that a
conductive path is a metal filament. The other type controls oxygen ions, so that a
conductive path is an oxygen deficient conductive region. Both types show nonvolatile switching with a high on/off ratio over five orders of magnitude.
1 Introduction
Nobody doubts that a representative of three-terminal devices is a semiconductor
transistor, that has enabled present-day highly sophisticated information society.
Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and its complementary system (CMOS) have drastically reduced a device size and power consumption
of electronic devices. The miniaturization should be the major cause of the successful development of high performance computing systems. If there were disadvantage
in MOSFETs, it must be its volatile operation requiring continuous bias application
to keep its on-state. Actually, the volatility has become a big issue in terms of energy
consumption in the last decade, inducing developments of nonvolatile devices such
as storage class memories for replacing certain parts of electronic devices in CMOS
T. Hasegawa (*)
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: thasega@waseda.jp
T. Tsuruoka · Y. Itoh · M. Aono
International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials
Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
T. Sakamoto
System Platform Research Laboratories, NEC, Ibaraki, Japan
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
M. Aono (ed.), Atomic Switch, Advances in Atom and Single Molecule Machines,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34875-5_7
127
Switches and Related Topics
T. Hasegawa, T. Tsuruoka, Y. Itoh, T. Sakamoto, and M. Aono
Abstract Three-terminal atomic switches control formation and annihilation of a
conductive path between a source and a drain by the electric field applied through a
gate electrode. Advantage of the three-terminal atomic switches to the two-terminal
atomic switches is that a signal line of the three-terminal atomic switches is separated
from a signal line, which increases their controllability especially when used as logic
devices. Three-terminal atomic switches are classified into two types by a species of
controlled ions that form a conductive path. One type controls metal cations, so that a
conductive path is a metal filament. The other type controls oxygen ions, so that a
conductive path is an oxygen deficient conductive region. Both types show nonvolatile switching with a high on/off ratio over five orders of magnitude.
1 Introduction
Nobody doubts that a representative of three-terminal devices is a semiconductor
transistor, that has enabled present-day highly sophisticated information society.
Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and its complementary system (CMOS) have drastically reduced a device size and power consumption
of electronic devices. The miniaturization should be the major cause of the successful development of high performance computing systems. If there were disadvantage
in MOSFETs, it must be its volatile operation requiring continuous bias application
to keep its on-state. Actually, the volatility has become a big issue in terms of energy
consumption in the last decade, inducing developments of nonvolatile devices such
as storage class memories for replacing certain parts of electronic devices in CMOS
T. Hasegawa (*)
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
e-mail: thasega@waseda.jp
T. Tsuruoka · Y. Itoh · M. Aono
International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials
Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
T. Sakamoto
System Platform Research Laboratories, NEC, Ibaraki, Japan
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
M. Aono (ed.), Atomic Switch, Advances in Atom and Single Molecule Machines,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34875-5_7
127