TRANSISTOR WITH AN ADJUSTABLE ENERGY BARRIER, AND ITS APPLICATION

A transistor with adjustable energy barrier and with ohmic contacts which has an npn or pnp three-layer structure (1, 2, 3) with a central layer (2) base which is so thin that, even without electric voltage applied to the electrodes, the entire region of this layer (2) is depleted in free charge carriers with its given level of doping. The doping densities N of emitter (E), base (B) and collector (C) regions meet the requirement NE > NB > NC. The collector current is controlled by altering an energy barrier for majority carriers with an applied base-emitter voltage, in contrast to a bipolar transistor in which the collector current is controlled by altering the minority carrier density in the base with an applied base-emitter voltage. The field of application includes discrete bipolar semiconductor devices and integrated circuits; use as amplifier, switch, mixer, oscillator and temperature sensor.