The Future of Integrated Circuits: A Survey of Nanoelectronics

While most of the electronics industry is dependent on the ever-decreasing size of lithographic transistors, this scaling cannot continue indefinitely. Nanoelectronics (circuits built with components on the scale of 10 nm) seem to be the most promising successor to lithographic based ICs. Molecular-scale devices including diodes, bistable switches, carbon nanotubes, and nanowires have been fabricated and characterized in chemistry labs. Techniques for self-assembling these devices into different architectures have also been demonstrated and used to build small-scale prototypes. While these devices and assembly techniques will lead to nanoscale electronics, they also have the drawback of being prone to defects and transient faults. Fault-tolerance techniques will be crucial to the use of nanoelectronics. Lastly, changes to the software tools that support the fabrication and use of ICs will be needed to extend them to support nanoelectronics. This paper introduces nanoelectronics and reviews the current progress made in research in the areas of technologies, architectures, fault tolerance, and software tools.     

Nanoelektronik

The rapid progress in electronics is fueled by both, the great demand of ever higher functionalities, and the permanent economic pressure to produce integrated systems at ever lower costs. The predominant figure of merit of this progress is the minimal feature size which is already far below 1 micron, and which will approach the 65 nm technology node in the next few years. Moreover, the actually envisaged technologies allow feature sizes of 10 to 20 nm. Electronic devices of these sizes are demonstrated to be functional as expected. Thus, only at remarkably smaller dimensions more drastic changes in both, the technologies and the device functionalities are to be expected. Whereas the eighties were merely technology oriented and brought the transition of the 1-micron barrier, the nineties were characterized by the dominance of the product ideas over the technologies. In the following years — with continuously shrinking feature sizes — the integration of the system level with the technology level became the most decisive factor for success. This integrative aspect will also be crucial for nanoelectronics. Independently from how nanoelectronic devices will work and whichever technologies will be involved, system aspects and the capabilities of system oriented design and engineering will decide how successful nanoelectronics will be and how far it will develop.     

跨世纪新学科—纳米电子学

本世纪最后十年，一个崭新的学科领域－纳米科学技术诞生了，这一新领域为多科性交叉学科，包括纳米电子学、纳米材料科学、纳米生物学、纳米机械学、纳米显微学和纳米制造等。本文讨论联新颖的纳米电子学的提出、设想、内容、现状和前景。纳米科学技术的最终目标是直接操纵单个原子或分子，制造具有特定功能的产品，从而将惊人地改变着人类的生产和生活模式。     

纳电子学的发展

进入21世纪,2004年集成电路的特征尺寸已进入90 nm节点,标志着微电子进入一个新的纪元,即进入了纳电子时代。介绍和总结了纳电子的新进展,包括纳电子的两条发展技术路线:其一是继续按自上而下的方法,以CMOS技术为基础,不断改变栅结构,改变沟道材料,增强控制电子的能力;其二是自下而上的新思路,采用新的器件结构,向自组装发展。此外,还介绍了"后CMOS"器件的工作原理、当前的实验以及和MOSFET相关的性能和面临的挑战。并预计了纳电子未来发展的趋势。     

Influence of tension-twisting deformations and defects on optical and electrical properties of B, N doped carbon nanotube superlattices

As the era of nanoelectronics is dawning, CNT (carbon nanotube), a one-dimensional nano material with outstanding properties and performances, has aroused wide attention. In order to study its optical and electrical properties, this paper has researched the influence of tension-twisting deformation, defects, and mixed type on the electronic structure and optical properties of the armchair carbon nanotube superlattices doped cyclic alternately with B and N by using the first-principle method. Our findings show that if tension-twisting deformation is conducted, then the geometric structure, bond length, binding energy, band gap and optical properties of B, N doped carbon nanotube superlattices with defects and mixed type will be influenced. As the degree of exerted tension-twisting deformation increases, B, N doped carbon nanotube superlattices become less stable, and B, N doped carbon nanotube superlattices with defects are more stable than that with exerted tension-twisting deformations. Proper tension-twisting deformation can adjust the energy gap of the system; defects can only reduce the energy gap, enhancing the system metallicity; while the mixed type of 5% tension, twisting angle of 15° and atomic defects will significantly increase the energy gap of the system. From the perspective of optical properties, doped carbon nanotubes may transform the system from metallicity into semi-conductivity.     

纳米科技与纳电子学

介绍了纳米科技与纳电子学的基本概念及其发展简史。在论述纳电子学动态的基础上,从电子学对器件的体积、速度和功率需求方面,分析了纳电子学的目标是“更小、更快、更冷”;以及研究纳电子学的现实和历史意义;基于纳电子器件的构成材料、基本理论与基本特性,特别对单电子器件的动态进行了分析,说明了纳电子学集成电路与计算是纳电子学发展的必然。在此基础上对纳电子学的存在问题和发展趋势进行了展望。     

Carbon Nanotube Electronics: Design of High-Performance and Low-Power Digital Circuits

Scaling of silicon transistors continue in the sub 100-nm regime amidst severe roadblocks. Increased short-channel effects, rising leakage currents, severe process parameter variations are only a few of the overwhelming challenges that the device and circuit designers are faced with. In an attempt to alleviate the problems associated with the scaling of silicon transistors, researchers have began a quest for novel alternate materials in a post-Si nanoelectronics era. Of the different materials investigated so far, carbon nanotubes with their superior transport properties, excellent thermal conductivities and high current handling capacities have proved to be a potential heir to Si. This paper reviews the promise of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors as future devices for high-performance as well as low-power electronics.     

大数据时代的数据分析

近年来互联网的高速发展引领人类进入了一个信息量爆炸性增长的时代。每个人的生活中都充满了结构化和非结构化的数据。随着人类生活全面向互联网转移,大数据时代将会不可避免的到来!作为全球互联网的前沿概念,大数据主要包括两方面特征:一方面整个社会的信息量急剧增长,另一方面个人可获取的信息也呈指数增长。从科技发展的角度来看,"大数据"是"数据化"趋势下的必然产物!并且随着这一趋势的不断深入,在不远的将来我们将身处于一个"一切都被记录,一切都被数字化"的时代。在这种背景下,对大数据的有效存储以及良好地分析利用变的越来越急迫。而数据分析能力的高低决定了大数据中价值发现过程的好坏与成败。本文以大数据时代的数据分析为主题,简明的阐述了国内大数据分析的发展现状、大数据的分析模式以及主要的分析技术、大数据时代数据分析的几个核心概念等相关问题。     

Universal cellular automaton cell using quantum cellular automata

In recent years cellular automata (CAs) have been used widely to model and simulate physical systems and also to solve scientific problems. CAs have also been successfully used as a VLSI architecture and have proved to be very efficient at least in terms of silicon-area utilisation and clock-speed maximisation. Quantum cellular automata (QCA) is one of the promising emerging technologies for nanoscale circuit implementation. QCA technology provides very high scale integration, very high switching frequency and very low power circuit characteristics. In the work reported here, a universal cellular automaton cell has been designed using QCA circuitry. The implementation of CAs using QCA nanoelectronic circuits not only drives the already developed systems based on CAs to the nanoelectronics era but improves their performance significantly.     

A Natural Silk Fibroin Protein‐Based Transparent Bio‐Memristor

The recent discovery of nanoelectronics memristor devices has opened up a new wave of enthusiasm and optimism in revolutionizing electronic circuit design, marking the beginning of new era for the advancement of neuromorphic, high‐density logic and memory applications. Here a highly non‐linear dynamic response of a bio‐memristor is demonstrated using natural silk cocoon fibroin protein of silkworm, Bombyx mori. A film that is transparent across most of the visible spectrum is obtained with the electronic‐grade silk fibroin aqueous solution of ca. 2% (wt/v). Bipolar memristive switching is demonstrated; the switching mechanism is confirmed to be the filamentary switching as observed by probing local conduction behavior at nanoscale using scanning tunneling microscopy. The memristive transition is elucidated by a physical model based on the carrier trapping or detrapping in silk fibroin films and this appears to be due to oxidation and reduction procedures, as evidenced from cyclic voltammetry measurements. Hence, silk fibroin protein could be used as a biomaterial for bio‐memristor devices for applications in advanced bio‐inspired very large scale integration circuit design as well as in biologically inspired synapse links for energy‐efficient neuromorphic computing.     

Nanoelectronics [quantum electron devices]

The dimensions of semiconductor devices can now be reduced to the point where quantum-mechanical effects must be considered in device performance. New device concepts have therefore been proposed, and already realised, in which quantum-mechanical effects are used to achieve increased electron mobilities or in which interference phenomena are utilised. At present, the major drawbacks of nanoelectronics are the technological problems of realising the devices. The emphasis of the paper is on new technological concepts for device realisation. Additionally, an overview of proposed and realised devices is given. Future advances in nanofabrication may come from the development of the scanning tunnelling microscope and related systems     

一种基于蚁群优化的显著边缘检测算法

该文提出一种基于蚁群优化的显著边缘检测算法。该算法利用相位编组方法计算支持区面积作为描述图像边缘梯度方向一致性的指标,将梯度幅度和支持区面积结合起来形成启发信息和信息素增量的计算方法,采用线性加权方法将信息素、梯度幅度、支持区面积3种信息综合起来得到蚂蚁转移概率,通过引入禁忌表增大蚂蚁的活动范围。实验结果表明:该文提出的算法能够有效检测图像中的显著边缘特征,对多类图像都有良好的适应性,而且收敛速度较快。     

二十一世纪的纳米硅电子技术

装置技术为适应电子市场的需求而发展 ,纳米硅电子技术伴随着电子信息产业的发展应运而生 ;本文综述了纳米硅电子技术的产生、现状及未来的发展趋势 ;并分析了纳米硅电子技术与信息产业发展的关系     

Nanoscale strain characterisation for ultimate CMOS and beyond

Strain engineering is used to maintain Moore's Law in scaled CMOS devices and as a technology booster for More-than-Moore devices in the nanoelectronics era. Strain is crucial because of its ability to increase electron and hole mobilities in Si. However, accurate correlations between electrical performance and strain measurements are needed to enable the necessary feedback between materials, processing and devices to achieve best possible solutions. In this work, we outline new methods for sensitive 3D profiling of strain on a nanoscale. High-resolution vertical and lateral strain profiles applicable to both global (biaxial) and process-induced (uniaxial) strained Si devices are demonstrated. Raman spectroscopy is pushed to its present limit for precise analysis of strain in small geometry devices, including the use of tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS) to improve the spatial resolution further. TERS maps are compared with atomic force microscopy data collected simultaneously and show that variations in surface morphology correlate directly with strain in the epitaxial layers. Sub-nm strain profiling is applied to strained Si and SiGe MOSFET channels. Strain is profiled across patterned uniaxial strained-Si-on-insulator structures and analysed in bended nanowire transistors. Finally strain is investigated across the channel regions of electrically measured SiGe p-MOSFETs. Good agreement between nanoscale strain measurements and finite element modelling is demonstrated. Sample preparation is included in the analysis and genuine effects of processing are investigated.     

Scenario-oriented design for single-chip heterogeneous multiprocessors

Single-chip heterogeneous multiprocessors (SCHMs) are arising to meet the computational demands of portable and handheld devices. These computing systems are not fully custom designs traditionally targeted by the design automation community, general-purpose designs traditionally targeted by the computer architecture community, nor pure embedded designs traditionally targeted by the real-time community. An entirely new design philosophy will be needed for this hybrid class of computing. The programming of the device will be drawn from a narrower set of applications with execution that persists in the system over a longer period of time than for general-purpose programming. However, the devices will still be programmable, not only at the level of the individual processing element, but across multiple processing elements and even the entire chip. The design of other programmable single chip computers has enjoyed an era where the design tradeoffs could be captured in simulators such as SimpleScalar and performance could be evaluated to the SPEC benchmarks. Motivated by this, we describe new benchmark-based design strategies for SCHMs which we refer to as scenario-oriented design. We include an example and results.     

A Review of Metrology for Nanoelectronics

This paper highlights some new and old techniques that will have important metrology inroads for nanoelectronics beyond CMOS. Traditional electron microscopy techniques are envisioned to remain and play a core role at the nanoscale level, and others such as probing techniques and special holographic imaging will further be enhanced and provide more diverse capabilities. The paper presents metrology techniques for beyond CMOS as presented at the First Metrology for Beyond CMOS workshop hosted by the Focus Center Research Program Center of Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics, the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Nanoprobing, and the California Institute of Technology (CNSI).     

面向21世纪的纳米电子学

评论了纳米电子学的沿革路程,介绍了纳米电子学的研究内容,并预测了它的发展趋势。进而指出,纳米电子学的崛起与发展将会对21世纪的量子计算机、量子通信以及量子信息处理等产生革命性的影响。     

On the asymptotic input-output weight distributions of some accumulate-based codes

In this letter, we show how to compute the asymptotic growth rate of input-output weight enumerator (AGR-IOWE) for some accumulate-based codes by using the sharp tools already developed. Numerical results on the AGR-IOWE for irregular repeat-accumulate (IRA) codes, systematic regular RA (SRA) codes, and concatenated zigzag codes are reported. It is observed that the SRA code has the same AGR-IOWE as a comparable concatenated zigzag code. For both SRA and concatenated zigzag codes, if keeping the code rate fixed, the increase of the grouping factor for the component punctured accumulate code may result in better asymptotic performance under maximum-likelihood decoding, but often worse performance under iterative sum-product decoding.     

Stepped-reflector antenna for dual-band multiple beam Satellite communications payloads

A novel stepped-reflector antenna (SRA) suitable for dual-band multiple beam satellite payloads is introduced in this paper. The SRA system produces "flat-top" radiation patterns for receive beams and highly efficient Gaussian patterns for transmit beams over a geographic coverage region as seen by the geo-synchronous satellite. It combines the reflector improvements through the use of SRA with the feed horn advancements through the use of dual-band "high-efficiency horns" in order to realize an efficient multiple beam antenna (MBA) system supporting both downlink transmit and uplink receive signals of communication satellites. It is shown that the SRA provides a congruent set of spot beams on ground for both transmit and receive frequencies with the benefits of significantly improved edge-of-coverage gain, improved co-polar isolation among beams that re-use the same frequency channels, receive beam patterns that are less sensitive to satellite pointing error, and reduced number of reflector antennas when compared to conventional MBAs.     

Howells-Applebaum adaptive superresolution array for acceleratedscanning

An approach is proposed that offers an accelerated scanning rate for a Howells-Applebaum adaptive superresolution array (H-A SRA). Analytical considerations clarify the causes of performance degradation of the H-A SRA at a high scanning rate. Then a suitable steering signal and implementation of an H-A weight control loop (H-A loop) for accelerated scanning are introduced. The weight solution determined by this method is shown to coincide approximately with the optimum Wiener one under some specific signal conditions and antenna parameters. Computer simulations show that the H-A SRA gives much better scanning performance than the conventional array. The system is readily implemented by improving the circuit inserting the steering signal in the H-A loop