AVS 45th International Symposium
    Electronic Materials and Processing Division Monday Sessions
       Session EM-MoA

Invited Paper EM-MoA5
Terabit Integration: New Ideas, Need for New Materials

Monday, November 2, 1998, 3:20 pm, Room 316

Session: Future Issues in Electronics and Photonics
Presenter: K.K. Likharev, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Correspondent: Click to Email
The electronics industry predicts that the current progress in scaling down silicon MOSFETs will lead eventually to dynamic random-access memories with a density of the order of 5 Gbits/cm@super 2@ and integration scale up to 64 Gbits. Further progress in this direction is, however, in doubt, mostly because of problems with the storage capacitance scaling. The situation may be changed by the recently proposed@footnote 1@ "crested" tunnel barriers, with an electrostatic potential maximum in the middle. In these barriers, applied voltage increases the barrier transparency much more quickly. Calculations have shown that crested barriers may combine long retention time (say, 10 years) with fast write/erase time (below 10 nanoseconds). This radical improvement may be used, first of all, in nonvolatile random-access memories ("NOVORAM"). Using dual-gate, nanoscale MOSFETs with ballistic electron transfer along undoped channels,@footnote 2@ NOVORAM cells are scaleable to a minimum feature size about 6 nm, corresponding to a memory density of 100 Gbits/cm@super 2@, and apparently integration scale up to 16 Tbits. Beyond this frontier, NOVORAM may be challenged by SET/FET hybrid memories@footnote 3@ with dynamic read-out using single-electron transistors (SETs) in background-charge-insensitive mode. Analysis shows that these memories may be scaled to the 2 nm minimum feature size, enabling integration up to 64 Tbits. Moreover, there is an opportunity to combine crested barriers and SET/FET hybrids in a system for electrostatic data storage with density beyond 100 Gbits per square inch. In my presentation at the meeting, I will describe these encouraging prospects in detail, and also discuss the requirements to materials for their practical implementation. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@K.K. Likharev, in: GOMAC'98 Technical Paper Digest, p. 35. @footnote 2@F. Pikus and K. Likharev, Appl. Phys. Lett. 71, 3661 (1997). @footnote 3@K.K. Likharev and A.N. Korotkov, in: Proc. of 1995 ISDRS, p. 355