We have developed a solid-electrolyte nonvolatile switch (here we refer as NanoBridge) with a low ON resistance and its small size. When we use a NanoBridge to switch elements in a programmable logic device, the chip size (or die cost) can be reduced and performance (speed and power consumption) can be enhanced. Developing this application required solving a couple of problems. First, the switching voltage of the NanoBridge (0.3 V) needed to be larger than the operating voltage of the logic circuit (>1 V). Second, the programming current (>1 mA) needed to be suppressed to avoid large power consumption. We demonstrate how the Nanobridge enhances the switching voltage and reduces the programming current.

This paper reviews our experimental results for electrical transport properties of nano-scale silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). We used very small devices produced using 10-nm-scale lithographic techniques: electrically variable shallow junction MOSFETs (EJ-MOSFETs) and lateral hot-electron transistors (LHETs). With LHETs we succeeded in directly detecting the hot-electron current and estimated the characteristic length to be around 25 nm. We also investigated the energy relaxation mechanism by performing measurements at various applied voltages and temperatures. Furthermore, we clearly observed the tunneling current between the source and drain (source-drain tunneling) in an 8-nm-gate-length EJ-MOSFET. Based on these experimental results, we predict the limitation of MOSFET miniaturization to be around 5 nm in the source-drain tunneling scheme.