Nano-Electro-Mechanical Integration and Computation (NEMIAC) nemiac.eu

1. Nano-Electro-Mechanical Integration and Computation (NEMIAC) www.nemiac.eu Introduction Applications Electromechanical relays are bulky components that have traditionally been used for switching in electrical circuits. The NEMIAC project aims to realise relay functionality on Silicon based nano-fabricated devices that can be batch manufactured. A large scale integration of these devices on a single chip would enable the implementation of logic circuits using the nano-electro-mechanical (NEM) relay primitives. Fig. 1: Schematic of a nano-electro-mechanical relay Technological Positioning When used as a switch, the NEM relays exhibit low power characteristics with practically zero off-state leakage current. The switching is also abrupt with a high on-state current. Such technology possesses the capability to free the next generation of smart components from CMOS imposed power constraints. Fig. 3: Early applications of NEM technology. Such applications can be integrated with NEM logic circuitry on the same chip.All pictures Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation. Unauthorized use not permitted Such a technology will be a key enabler for the next generation of smart components characterised by ultra-low power consumption and advanced functionality. Many industrial and civilian application areas, including environment habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home automation, traffic control, industrial process monitoring and machine health monitoring will benefit from this technology. Within this project, switches suitable for digital logic circuits will be explored and developed along with innovative circuit architectures. Fig. 2: V-I characteristics comparison The NEM relay technology can be heterogeneously integrated with standard CMOS circuits, in a low-cost wafer-level hermetic packaging technology. The potential benefits of a mature integrated circuit technology based on NEM switches are an order of magnitude improvement in energy efficiency with no performance penalty in a variety of processing applications. Sponsored by EU Seventh Framework Programme. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) FP7-ICT-2011-7-3.2 - Design of Semiconductor Components and Electronic Based Miniaturised Systems. Small or medium-scale focused research project (STREP). Grant No. 288670