Fabrication of CMOS Compatible 2-terminal NEMS for Low Power Applications

Abstract

Nano-electro-mechanical switch (NEMS) plays a key role to reduce the leakage current as compared to the traditional CMOS in ultra-low power applications. This is because of the air gap between two metal plates in 2-terminal (2T) NEMS i.e. there is almost zero leakage current while it's in OFF-state. In this paper, we demonstrate a CMOS compatible NEMS with 1.5 V pull-in voltage, $\sim 150\ \Omega$ ON-state resistance (RON), 15 ns turn ON delay, and 109 ON/OFF current ratio (ION/IOFF) in the ambient conditions. This work exhibits the combination of electron beam lithography (EBL) and a bilayer lift-off process at room temperature (RT) to realize the NEMS. This combination facilitates easy release of structures with an air gap of 25 nm and a beam size of $1\ \mu m\times 1.5\ \mu m$. This low power NEMS will be useful for the zero leakage switch for the variety of low power applications.