AMHET are unipolar minority carrier transistors, where the minority carrier is hot electrons and the majority carrier is cold electrons. Cold electrons are those with energy equal to the Fermi level of the base metal, and hot electrons are those with energy above this. The hot electrons are generated by tunneling across the high-k oxide dielectric and their flow to the collector electrode is regulated by the collector-base barrier and electric field.

AMHET technology is the path into flexible integrated circuits from LSI analog/RF/mmwave physical layer and data converters to VLSI application-specific microprocessors. The relative insensitivity of AMHET to vertical alignment in photolithography, the THz-level switching speed, and the simple device structure and materials make AMHET the ideal device for flexible IC fabrication.