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NRI To Lead Post-CMOS Electronics Development Program

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A new five year program, involving GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel, Micron and Texas Instruments aims to replace ageing CMOS transistor technologies



The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has chosen the NRI to support university-centred research for the development of after-the-next-generation "nanoelectronics" technology.

The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) is a collaboration of several key firms in the semiconductor industry. These include GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments.

One nanoelectronics approach studied by the NRI MIND centre is nanomagnet logic (NML) -logic circuits that work by magnetic coupling between neighbouring nanoscale magnets.

The left hand image above is an SEM micrograph while the right hand image is a magnetic force microscope image. Both show an NML circuit that adds binary numbers.

"The NRI is a model for industry-driven consortia," says NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. "It funds a highly leveraged, coordinated nanoelectronics research program centred at leading universities in partnership with federal and state government agencies. The innovation stemming from this NIST award will enable the United States to keep our current leadership in nanoelectronics that stimulates the economy and creates high-paying jobs."

NIST will provide $2.6 million of funding for up to five years, matched by $870 thousand each year from NRI.

The program funds research at university centres around the country that are working to develop the fundamental nanoscale technologies that will be needed in the future to replace the ageing CMOS transistor technologies at the heart of today's state-of-the-art electronics.

Over the past few decades, silicon-based CMOS circuits have relentlessly followed a path of becoming smaller and more complex and powerful. However, the basic underlying transistor technology is approaching physical limits.

"Continued progress by the electronics industry will require something very different. Future generations of electronics will be based on new devices and circuit architectures, operating on physical principles that cannot be exploited by conventional transistors," notes Tom Theis, director of the NRI.

The new award is essentially the successor to an earlier five-year collaboration between NRI and NIST that also focussed on the long-term goal of "developing the next logic switch."

The earlier program concentrated largely on the problem of developing the basic logic elements that are the building blocks of electronic devices. The new program will broaden the scope to consider novel circuit architectures and devices that combine logic with memory, analogue and other functions to provide high "computational density."

The NRI initiative was launched by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) in 2005. The NRI and the collaboration with NIST are managed by the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC), a special-purpose subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).

"The NRI seeks to ensure that the United States remains the leader in cutting-edge semiconductor research and is home to the "˜nanoelectronics' industry of the future," says SRC President Larry Sumney.

Since its inception, the NRI program has involved the research of nearly 500 students from more than 55 universities. This has resulted in 34 patent application, with seven patents granted and citations in more than 1,900 research publications.

NRI currently supports four principle university-led research centres to pursue this work. These include the Western Institute of Nanoelectronics (WIN) in California, the Midwest Institute of Nanoelectronics Discovery (MIND) in Indiana, the Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX) in New York, and the SouthWest Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) in Texas.

The award to NRI was the result of a competition announced by NIST last spring.

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