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Nanoelectronics in Retrospect, Prospect, and Principle

Dr. James D. Meindl - Professor of Microelectronics, Georgia Institute of TechnologyThe information revolution has been the paramount economic development of the past five decades. Its principal driver has been silicon microchip technology, which has advanced in productivity by a factor of approximately one billion and in performance, for example of a microprocessor chip, by a factor of nearly one million. These concurrent advances have been implemented by a synergistic fusion of top-down directed assembly microtechnology (or scaling currently to the 25-50 nm range) and bottom-up self assembly nanotechnology producing 300 mm diameter single crystal ingots of silicon. CMOS dynamic power-delay product is projected to continue to benefit from scaling but static gate tunneling current and subthreshold channel leakage current, device parameter manufacturing tolerances and interconnect latency, severely aggravated by resistivity increases due to size effects in copper, progressively degrade from scaling. Consequently, novel ancillary technologies including: 1) increased chip input/output (I/O) interconnect density providing improved electrical and optical I/O bandwidth; 2) enhanced heat removal, for example through microchannel fluidic cooling; and 3) 3D chip stacking with through silicon vias to reduce multi-core microprocessor to off-chip cache memory interconnect lengths are now projected as critical means of prolonging the exponential rate of advance of silicon microchip technology. Following anticipated saturation of this advance early in the 2020 decade, a new genre of nanoelectronics is a coveted goal and one leading candidate appears to be graphene, particularly due to its ballistic carrier transport, adjustable energy band gap of nanoribbons, susceptibility to fusion of top-down and bottom-up nanotechnology and potential for 3D monolithic integration. However, we have not yet witnessed in graphene the 21st century equivalents of two Nobel Prize winning inventions, the transistor and the integrated circuit. Dr. Meindl is the founding Director of the Marcus Nanotechnolgy Research Center, Director of the Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2007 Meindl was awarded Eminent Member of Eta Kappa Nu. He is a Life-Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. Meindl received the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor, the 2004 SRC Aristotle Award, first place on the 2003 IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference 50-Year Anniversary Author Honor Roll, and the 1999 SIA University Research Award. He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees in electrical engineering, from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Carnegie Mellon University).

Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Marilyn Poplawski