Complementary Nano-Electro-Mechanical Switches For Ultra-Low-Power Applications: Fabrication, Design and Simulation

Energy efficiency and Idle power consumption are becoming important parameters in the design of embedded systems. Excessive quiescent power dissipation can lead to excessive heat generation and reliability issues in nanometer-scale CMOS. To address energy efficiency and Idle power consumption, we present a novel NEM switch that we manufactured which operates with virtually zero leakage current, the first manufactured mechanical switch that has 1 Volt operation voltage, > 1 GHZ fundamental resonant frequency, and nanometer-scale footprint. These NEM switches can be dropped in and hybridized with CMOS at the metallization or device levels to manage leakage current and power. The switches can be configured as positive or negative channel switches in the form of complementary NEMS (CNEMS) to implement logic gates and processors. CNEMS can provide nearly infinite current at a fixed voltage determined by the power supply. In this paper, we present the NEM switch structure, fabrication, CNEMS design, and a device calibrated circuit simulation/evaluation model. We present experimental results showing an order of magnitude improvement in power dissipation over nanometer-scale CMOS.