Electrically Isolating, Thermally Coupling Devices

Integrated signaling devices of a proposed type would utilize thermal coupling to transfer digital signals between electronic circuits that are required to be kept electrically isolated from each other. The proposed devices would be implemented as silicon-on-insulator complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (SOI CMOS) integrated circuits and could therefore be readily integrated with other SOI CMOS devices. For some applications, the proposed devices could be an attractive alternative to conventional optocouplers, which have not been amenable to integration with CMOS devices because of a lack of silicon-based integrated sources of light.