Characteristics of zinc-oxide-on-silicon signal processing and storage devices

The monolithic combination of sputtered zinc oxide on an oxidized silicon substrate has been utilized as an acoustic surface wave nonlinear convolver. It has been found that the mixing efficiency of an area on the device can be weighted either by applied local bias or illumination. It has, furthermore, been found that gate bias or illumination can be used to store weighting information in the form of trapped charge in the zinc oxide. In multiline convolvers one can use the nonlinear relation between the amount of charge trapped and applied writing bias to form matrix addressable memory cell arrays. Also, one can use the sensitivity of the interaction efficiency on applied bias to select a desired output line, and thus, achieve a raster scanning capability without switching any RF.