SUB 3-micron gap microplasma fet with 50 V turn-on voltage

This work reports the smallest microplasma field-effect transistor reported till date that operates with a low turn-on voltage of ~50V dc; a more than 3x reduction in the turn-on voltage compared to earlier reported work. Our previous work used plasma from an external source to operate the transistor while in the present work we use rf or dc voltage to directly generate plasma in the transistor channel and use dc gate field effect to control the device conduction. The reduction in turn-on voltage is achieved by a small plasma cavity of 1.5μm gap width.