Acoustic surface wave interaction charge-coupled device

Abstract

The observation of the synchronous drag of minority carriers by the electric field associated with an acoustic surface wave is reported. This phenomenon is exploited in a new charge-coupled device (CCD) which uses a traveling piezoelectric surface acoustic wave in place of the gate structure of a conventional CCD. The surface wave interaction CCD (SWICC) should have several potential advantages over normal CCD’s, including increased information density, higher speed, and lower power consumption.