Plasma-Metal Junction:A Junction With Negative Turn-On Voltage

TL;DR

This paper investigates plasma-metal junctions, revealing they can have negative turn-on voltages, which could enable high-frequency electronic applications, and compares their behavior to traditional solid-state junctions.

Contribution

The study introduces the plasma-metal junction with negative turn-on voltage and validates the energy-band model for this novel device, proposing a new gaseous electronic device concept.

Findings

Plasma-metal junction exhibits negative turn-on voltage of -7.0V.

Turn-on voltage depends on metal's work function but remains unchanged.

Compared to solid-state junctions, pm-junctions enable high-frequency applications.

Abstract

Unlike junctions in solid-state devices, a plasma-metal junction (pm-junction) is a junction of classical and quantum electrons. The plasma electrons are Maxwellain in nature, while metal electrons obey the Fermi-Dirac distribution. In this experiment, the current-voltage characteristics of solid-state devices that form homo or hetero-junction are compared to the pm-junction. Observation shows that the turn-on voltage for pn-junction is 0.5V and decreases to 0.24V for metal-semiconductor junction. However, the pm-junction's turn-on voltage was lowered to a negative value of -7.0V. The devices with negative turn-on voltage are suitable for high-frequency operations. Further, observations show that the current-voltage characteristics of the pm-junction depend on the metal's work function, and the turn-on voltage remains unchanged. This result validates the applicability of the energy-band model for the pm-junction. We present a perspective metal-oxide-plasma (MOP), a gaseous electronic device, as an alternative to metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS), based on the new understanding developed.