The Board of Trustees of University of Illinois Assigned Patent

The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, has been assigned a patent (11527648) developed by Zhu, Wenjuan, Xu, Kai, Champaign, IL, Liu, Jialun, San Ramon, CA, and Zhao, Zijing, Champaign, IL, for “transistors with switchable polarity and non-volatile configurations.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Transistors with switchable polarity and non-volatile configurations are provided. The transistors include a van der Waals (vdW) semiconductor layer. A ferroelectric layer with local polarization determines the type and concentration of the doping in the vdW semiconductor layer. Local program gates allow application of voltage to set or switch the polarization in the ferroelectric layer in the source and drain regions. Source and drain contacts permit either n-type or p-type transistor operations according to the carrier polarity in the vdW semiconductor layer.”

The patent application was filed on 2021-02-01 (17/164472).