Vacuum tubes were central to the early development of electronics, but were replaced, decades ago, by semiconductor transistors. Vacuum channel devices, however, offer inherently faster operation and better noise immunity due to the nature of their channel. They are also stable in harsh environments such as radiation and high temperature. However, to be a plausible alternative to solid-state electronics, nanoscale vacuum channel devices need to be fabricated on the wafer scale using established integrated circuit manufacturing techniques. Here, we show that nanoscale vacuum channel transistors can be fabricated on 150 mm silicon carbide wafers. Our devices have a vertical surround-gate configuration and we show that their drive current scales linearly with the number of emitters on the source pad. The silicon carbide vacuum devices are also compared to identically sized silicon vacuum channel transistors, which reveals that the silicon carbide devices offer superior long-term stability.

真空管在电子学的早期发展中起着至关重要的作用，但几十年前被半导体晶体管所取代。但是，由于真空通道设备的通道性质，其本质上可以提供更快的运行速度和更好的抗噪性。它们在辐射和高温等恶劣环境下也很稳定。然而，作为固态电子设备的合理替代品，需要使用已建立的集成电路制造技术在晶片级上制造纳米级真空通道设备。在这里，我们表明可以在150毫米的碳化硅晶片上制造纳米级真空沟道晶体管。我们的设备具有垂直环绕门配置，我们证明了它们的驱动电流与源极板上发射极的数量成线性比例。