1. Literature Review
Demonstration of Integrated Micro-Electro-Mechanical Switch Circuits for VLSI Applications Fred Chen, Matthew Spencer, Rhesa Nathanael, Chengcheng Wang, Hossein Fariborzi, Abhinav Gupta, Hei Kam, Vincent Pott, Jaeseok Jeon, Tsu-Jae King Liu, Dejan Markovic, Vladimir Stojanovic, Elad Alon Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA University of California, Berkeley, CA University of California, Los Angeles, CA ISSCC February, 2010
Kevin Dwan
March 12, 2010
UCLA

2. Introduction How does the Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEM) Device Work?
Electro-static force actuates the Gate
Can behave like a “pmos” or “nmos”
Due to large size, requires large supply voltage (~10V)
Can be monolithically integrated by using MEM process

3. MEM vs. CMOS What Advantages does this have over CMOS?
CMOS circuits have lower boundary on energy efficiency due to sub-threshold leakage
MEM devices minimize sub-threshold
leakage to nearly ideal levels (~10x lower energy over CMOS)
Are there any tradeoffs?
Larger in area due to mechanical movement
Mechanical delay is much higher than CMOS (can run up to ~100MHz)

4. MEM Circuit: Inverter & Carry-Generate
Inverter/XOR
Hysteretic switching
Full rail output
Enables cascades
Carry-Generate
1 Mechanical Delay
All inputs switch at once, due to large disparity between mechanical and electrical delay

5. MEM Circuit: Oscillator
Mechanical Delay
28us
Electrical Delay
<100ns
Can drive large loads
Suitable for I/O

6. MEM Circuit: DAC Compute and communicate
Can perform logic and drive loads

7. MEM Circuit: Latch
Psuedo NMOS style
Regenerative

8. MEM Circuit: DRAM
Low leakage current is well suited for DRAM

9. Conclusion
Demonstrates feasibility of computational and memory building blocks
MEM Circuits can drive each other to form composable digital circuits
Large disparity between Electrical and Mechanical delay requires circuit level re-architecting to capitalize on ideal Ion/Ioff characteristics
Scaling, device reliability, and circuit design advancements are still needed
Potential to become an attractive alternative to CMOS