Theoretical Study of Sliding-Electrification-Gated Tribotronic Transistors and Logic Device

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) were invented as a highly effective technology for harvesting ambient mechanical energy. By coupling the TENG and metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, a new field of tribotronics has been recently proposed using the electrostatic potential created by triboelectrification as a gate voltage to tune/control charge-carrier transport in semiconductors. In this work, the performance of a sliding-electrification-gated tribotronic transistor (SGT) and a sliding-electrification-gated tribotronic logic device (SGL) are theoretically investigated. The drain–source current characteristics for both the N-channel SGT and P-channel SGT are calculated in enhancement and depletion modes, respectively, which are found to be controlled by triboelectric charge amount, sliding distance, and drain voltage. By scaling down the conduction channel length to 10 nm, the SGT can still work and exhibit similar current characteristic and charge-transfer process, showing the great potential of tribotronics in large-scale array integration. Furthermore, the operation principle of a designed SGL based on two N-channel SGTs in enhancement mode is revealed. This work could provide in-depth understanding of physical mechanisms for tribotronic devices and design guidance for potential applications of tribotronics.