The continuous development of electronics has been characterized by Moore's law. Although
the current CMOS integrated circuit development is driven by a lot of innovations,
there are still some limits determined by unavoidable physical effects. There are
many new ideas for building atomic or molecular scale devices for the information
technology, but there is still a gap between CMOS technology and novel devices. The
recently proposed thermal-electronic device (phonsistor) and the CMOS compatible thermal-electronic
logic circuit (TELC) may help to fill this gap. The operation is based on the semiconductor-metal
transition (SMT) effect shown by certain materials, for example VO2. The switches
can be excited by electronic and thermal signals as well, thus two different physical
parameters are available for representing the logic states. A proof of concept for
the device operation has been demonstrated, and device scaling and integration issues
will be discussed too.
