NU 2013-097

Inventors

Allan Sahakian*

Bruce Wessels*

Joseph Friedman

Short Description

Carbon nanotube and graphene nanoribbon logic circuits to improve transistor scaling limits

Abstract

Continued reduction in transistor sizes has provided the technological basis for marked circuit performance improvements, making possible billion transistor integrated circuits operating at gigahertz frequencies. The smaller size of these devices, however, results in increased fabrication difficulties, higher power densities, and parasitic effects that threaten to limit the further improvement of Si-based circuits. In an effort to provide continued improvements in computing performance, newly available materials and devices have been evaluated as building blocks for next generation computing. This invention is a new paradigm for performing automatic computation developed using carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons. All-carbon spin logic provides significant improvements in speed, power, and area, promising to be a very high-performance logic family for the next generation of computing. This new paradigm has the potential to replace CMOS for general computing applications.

Applications

• High performance computing
• General computing
• Mobile computing
• Low power computing
• Low temperature computing

Advantages

• 2 THz clock frequency due to current-based logic and carbon material properties
• Potential for 100x improvement in computing efficiency compared to CMOS
• Cascaded logic
• High noise tolerance

IP Status

Issued US Patent No. 9,186,103