Ambipolar Barristors for Reconfigurable Logic Circuits

Vertical heterostructures based on graphene have emerged as a unique architecture for novel electronic devices with unusual characteristics. Here we report a new design of vertical ambipolar barristors based on metal–graphene–silicon–graphene sandwich structure, using the bottom graphene as a gate-tunable “active contact”, the top graphene as an adaptable Ohmic contact, and the low doping thin silicon layer as the switchable channel. Importantly, with finite density of states and weak screening effect of graphene, we demonstrate, for the first time, that both the carrier concentration and majority carrier type in the sandwiched silicon can be readily modulated by gate potential penetrating through graphene. It can thus enable a new type of ambipolar barristors with an ON-OFF ratio exceeding 103. Significantly, these ambipolar barristors can be flexibly configured into either p-type or n-type transistors and used to create integrated circuits with reconfigurable logic functions. This unconventional device ...