Negative Differential Resistance Circuit Design and Memory Applications

Based on a circuit point of view, a high-performance negative differential resistance (NDR) element is designed and a possible compact device implementation is presented. The NDR structure exhibits ultrahigh peak-to-valley current ratio and also high switching speed. The corresponding process and design are completely compatible with contemporary Si CMOS technology, as they rely on coupled transistor structures. A single-NDR element static-random-access-memory cell prototype with a compact size and high speed is proposed as an interesting application suitable for embedded memory.