Semiconductor Foundation, NSF Fund Nanoelectronics Research

Graphene molecular illustration (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and National Science Foundation (NSF) are funding $20 million in grants on nanoelectronics research. Some 12 research teams at 24 participating U.S. universities will conduct research over a four-year period on a new switching mechanism using nanoscale electronics as a replacement for current transistors, the building block of today’s semiconductor industry and computing technology.

Chip manufacturers in the past could double the number of transistors on a chip at half the power for each transistor by shrinking them smaller in each new generation of semiconductors. Recently, it has become more difficult to continue the decrease in power needed to switch transistors off and on, choking the pace of advances from scaling alone. SRC and NSF says new breakthroughs ranging from basic materials science and chemistry to advanced devices and circuit architecture will be required.

The grants were awarded for the following projects …

– Scalable Sensing, Storage and Computation with a Rewritable Oxide Nanoelectronics Platform, directed by Jeremy Levy at University of Pittsburgh

– Integrated Biological and Electronic Computation at the Nanoscale, directed by Timothy Lu at MIT.

– Developing a Graphene Spin Computer: Materials, Nano-Devices, Modeling, and Circuits, directed by Roland Kawakami at University of California at Riverside.

– Charge-Density-Wave Computational Fabric: New State Variables and Alternative Material Implementation, directed by Alexander Balandin at University of California at Riverside.

– Meta-Capacitance and Spatially Periodic Electronic Excitation Devices, directed by Jonathan Spanier at Drexel University.

– Hybrid Spintronics and Straintronics: New Technology for Ultra-Low Energy Computing and Signal Processing Beyond the Year 2020, directed by Supriyo Bandyopadhyay at Virginia Commonwealth University.

– Ultimate Electronic Device Scaling Using Structurally Precise Graphene Nanoribbons, directed by Paulette Clancy at Cornell University.

– Nanoelectronics with Mixed-valence Molecular QCA, directed by Craig Lent at University of Notre Dame.

– Physics-Inspired Non-Boolean Computation Based on Spatial-Temporal Wave Excitations, directed by Wolfgang Porod at University of Notre Dame.

– Scalable Perpendicular All-Spin Non-Volatile Logic Devices and Circuits with Hybrid Interconnection, directed by Jian-Ping Wang at University of Minnesota at Twin Cities.

– Novel Quantum Switches Using Heterogeneous Atomically Layered Nanostructures, directed by Philip Kim at Columbia University.

– Superlattice-FETs, Gamma-L-FETs and Tunnel-FETs: Materials, Circuits and Devices for Fast, Ultra-Low Power, directed by Mark Rodwell at University of California at Santa Barbara.

The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), one of three research programs at SRC, is providing industry collaboration with the university grantees. Companies participating in NRI are GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel Corporation, Micron Technology, and Texas Instruments.

Read more:   Virginia Universities Form Nanotech Research Center

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