1. Nanoscale Electrochemical Switches Dr. James G. Kushmerick OFFON

2. Nanoscale Electrochemical Switches OFFON 1. OFF state – molecular tunnel junction 2. V threshold reached. Ag + filament bridges gap. Switches ON. 3. Remains in ON state until polarity switched. 4. At 0 V, device is returned to OFF state. Device can be rapidly cycled between ON and OFF Greater than 1 million switch cycles achieved Fastest monolayer switch to date = 13 kHz On-Off Ratio > 10 5 Device area ~ 25 nm 2 ~ 2 nm

3. Detail of Switch Mechanism

4. Why would anyone be interested in a nanoscale switch?

5. CMOS Scaling 197019801990200020102020 Minimum Feature Size (  m) 0.01 0.1 1.0 10 65 nm node (2005) …drives Si technology towards fundamental limits Courtesy INTEL Courtesy of Intel Rock’s Law: the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years

6. Nanoscale Crossbar Fabrication Science 300 (2003) 112-115

7. State of the Art Filament Switches

8. Advantages Ease of fabrication Huge On-Off Ratio (>10 5 ) High success rate for device fabrication (>90%) Small Device Area (~25 nm 2 ) Challenges/Opportunities Slow Switch Speed (~10 kHz) defines possible applications (e.g. memory arrays and FPGA) Not easily integrated into CMOS fab-line, but no fab-line needed

9. Technology Applications Nanoscale Electrical Devices –Memory Arrays –Field-Programmable Gate Arrays Commercial Applications Memory and logic for cell phone and other portable electronic devices

10. Future Work Optimization of switch characteristics –Increase switch speed –Increase # of cycles till failure Fabricate nanoscale memory devices

11. Collaboration Opportunities Future work would best be done in collaboration between NIST and an interested industrial partner. Intellectual Property: “Self-Assembled Monolayer Based Silver Switches ” Provisional Patent Application filed 9/10/2007 Serial # 11/852,811

12. Contact Information For further information contact: –James G. Kushmerick 100 Bureau Drive Stop 8372 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8372 Tel: (301) 975-5697 email: james.kushmerick@nist.gov