Research in the Leighton and Frisbie Groups Increases the Speed Limit in Electrochemical Transistors

Oxide electrochemical transistors are new devices in which the application of small voltages reduces or oxidizes transition-metal oxides, inducing enormous changes in properties. These devices are of high interest in electronics, magnetics, photonics, and other fields, particularly due to their low power operation. While highly promising, various factors are thought to limit the response speed of such devices, and so they have only been considered for low-speed applications. 

Recent collaborative work between the Leighton and Frisbie Groups in CEMS performed the first complete study of dynamics in these devices, focusing on electrolyte-gate cobaltite oxide transistors. This was done in both the frequency and time domains, in side- and top-gate devices, with varied layer thicknesses and device designs. The response speed was found to be solely limited by depth-wise oxygen diffusion in the oxide, yielding quantitative understanding of performance. Most significantly, optimized parameters were found to enable response times as low as 0.7 seconds, orders of magnitude improved over prior work. These speeds are already sufficient for various applications (e.g., in voltage-tunable photonics), and the work points to several promising routes to further gains.  

This research was recently published in the journal ACS Nano, and was coauthored by Jerry Liang, Will Postiglione, Maggie Van Someren, Nileena Nandakumaran, Ben Joeng, Dan Frsibie, and Chris Leighton. The work was primarily supported by the NSF-supported MRSEC at the University of Minnesota.

Read the full article at the ACS Nano website.