Electro-Mechanical Simulation of Switching Characteristics for Nanoelectromechanical Memory

The static switching properties and readout characteristics of proposed high-speed and nonvolatile nanoelectromechanical (NEM) memory devices are investigated By conducting a three-dimensional finite element mechanical simulation combined with an electrostatic analysis, we analyze the electromechanical switching operation of a mechanically bistable NEM floating gate by applying gate voltage. We show that switching voltage can be reduced to less than 10V by reducing the zero-bias displacement of the floating gate and optimizing the cavity structure to improve mechanical symmetry. We also analyze the electrical readout property of the NEM memory devices by combining the electromechanical simulation with a drift-diffusion analysis We demonstrate that the mechanically bistable states of the floating gate can be detected via the changes in drain current with an ON/OFF current ratio of about 3 x 10 (C) 2009 The Japan Society of Applied Physic

Si/Ge hole-tunneling double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes formed on sputtered flat Ge layers

We have demonstrated Si/Ge hole-tunneling double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) formed on flat Ge layers with a relaxation rate of 89% by our proposed method; in this method, the flat Ge layers can be directly formed on highly B-doped Si(001) substrates using our proposed sputter epitaxy method. The RTDs exhibit clear negative differential resistance effects in the static current–voltage (I–V) curves at room temperature. The quantized energy level estimation suggests that resonance peaks that appeared in the I–V curves are attributed to hole tunneling through the first heavy- and light-hole energy levels