A Hysteresis Free Graphene Based Nanoelectromechanical Switch With Hexagonal Boron Nitride As A Contact

TL;DR

This paper presents a graphene-based nanoelectromechanical switch with hexagonal boron nitride contact that achieves hysteresis-free operation, low voltage, high durability, and high ON/OFF ratio, advancing ultra-low power CMOS technology.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel graphene-hBN NEM switch with significantly reduced hysteresis and low pull-in voltage, enhancing performance for energy-efficient CMOS circuits.

Findings

Low pull-in voltage of < 2 V

High contact lifetime over 6x10^4 cycles

Hysteresis voltage as small as < 0.1 V

Abstract

Nano Electro Mechanical (NEM) contact switches have been widely studied as one of the alternative for classical field effect transistor (FET). An ideal NEM contact switch with hysteresis free switching slope (SS) of 0 mV/dec is desired to achieve the ultimate scaling of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (IC) but never realized. Here we show, low pull-in voltage, hysteresis free graphene based NEM contact switch with hBN as a contact larger. The hysteresis voltage is greatly reduced by exploiting the weak adhesion energy between the graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). The graphene NEM contact switch with hBN as contact exhibits low pull-in voltage of < 2 V, high contact life time of more than 6x10^4 switching cycles, ON/OFF ratio of 10^4 orders of magnitude and hysteresis voltage of as small as < 0.1 V. Our G-hBN NEM contact switch can be potentially used in ultra-low power energy efficient CMOS IC's.