Manufacturability of quantum semiconductor devices

A plethora of new device concepts have been established that exploit quantum confinement or tunnelling in semiconductor multilayers as the basis of their operation, and some device prototypes have given impressive performance figures-of-merit. These devices will never become commercial, however, until there is some confidence in designing to an I-V characteristic, and being able to grow and qualify the semiconductor multilayers with adequate confidence to undertake reverse engineering. A summary of tunnel device ideas is followed by a description of a project to determine whether even the simplest tunnel structure (a single tunnel barrier in an asymmetric doping environment-the ASPAT diode) can be considered manufacturable.