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A novel nanodevice, known as the self-switching diode (SSD), has recently shown promising properties as a room-temperature detector at terahertz frequencies. The SSD is a unipolar two-terminal device. It has a nonlinear current-voltage characteristic which resembles the behaviour of a conventional diode. The device therefore can be exploited as a rectifier. The planar structure of the SSD provides intrinsically low parasitic capacitance that enables signal rectification at higher speed than a standard vertical diode. It also allows the fabrication of a large number of SSDs in a single lithography step without the need for interconnection layers, which may introduce parasitic elements. Indeed, this is the key feature of the SSD that makes the whole fabrication process simpler, faster and at lower cost when compared with other conventional electronic nanodevices. Moreover, the SSD works very well with low-cost materials such as zinc oxide and organic thin films. This would be the center of my research with the aim of functioning SSDs at room temperature and at high speed using low-cost materials including graphene. The research will also explore the possible designs of novel planar diodes (other than SSD) that can be utilized as a high-speed rectifier. This will be performed using device simulation software such as ATLAS from Silvaco.
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