Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S) Principal Investigator: Yablonovitch, Eli Proposal Number: 0939514 Lead Institution: University of California, Berkeley
Information-processing equipment, including computers, consumer electronics, telephony, office equipment, network equipment, data centers and servers, and supercomputers consumes a significant fraction of the total electricity production in the US, and it is growing dramatically with time, both on an absolute basis and as a fraction of the total. The inexorable growth in the role of information in society will place an increasing burden on the US energy economy. Aggregate energy used for information technology constitutes a genuine, looming energy crisis in information processing. At the most fundamental level, the energy used to manipulate a single bit of information is currently a million times greater than theoretical limits. In order to address this issue, there is a critical need for fundamental and conceptual breakthroughs in the underlying physics, chemistry and materials science that form the foundation of information-processing technologies. This Science and Technology Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S) seeks to approach the fundamental physical limits and engineering realization of electronic devices and systems for digital information- processing technologies. The Center for E3S proposes to research revolutionary concepts, and scientific principles that would enable fundamentally new and different science for digital-information processing, in order to achieve a radical reduction in energy usage.
Intellectual Merit: Current technology is dependent on the transistor, which suffers from a serious voltage-dependent limitation, since it requires a powering voltage close to 1 Volt, whereas the wires of an electronic circuit will function with tolerable signal-to-noise ratio, even at voltages as low as 1 millivolt. If the operating voltage is reduced by a factor of one thousand, than power will be reduced by a factor of one million. Hence, the energy per bit-function in digital electronics is currently one million times higher than it needs to be. New science that would enable a millivolt electronic switch will lead to a successor to the conventional transistor, thereby resulting in a paradigm shift in digital electronics. Currently, CMOS dissipates a minimum of about 30,000 eV per digital function. The 2007 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors projects a goal for this value to be reduced to about 800 eV per digital function by the Year 2022. To address this revolutionary challenge, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford University will assemble in E3S to conduct research in four interrelated themes: I. Nanoelectronics: solid-state millivolt switching; 2. Nanomechanics: zero-leakage switching; 3. Nanomagnetics: surpassing the Landauer Limit; and 4. Nanophotonics: few-photon optical communication, for the common goal of new energy-efficient device architectures.
The central idea behind Theme 1 is to change the operational paradigm for the logic switch by controlling the width of the energy barrier rather than the height. Conduction occurs via tunneling of electrons, and it can be shown that this type of device can be operated at very low supply voltages and with very low off-currents. Theme 2 is focused on the design of nanoelectromechanical switches that will have zero off-state leakage current. To overcome contact wear and reliability issues, two novel switching device structures are proposed; one with an interface material between electrodes as they close; and one that uses a complementary configuration to obtain very-low-energy switching. Theme 3 seeks to surmount the Landauer Limit of 18 meV energy dissipation per logic operation at room temperature by using nanomagnetic devices. Electrical control of ferromagnetism, as compared to an external magnetic field, is proposed as an energy-efficient alternative. Theme 4 seeks to use nanophotonics for ultra-low-energy communications to approach the physical energy limits for intra and inter-chip communication between devices. A new form of spontaneous emission of light will be explored that is potentially superior to conventional stimulated emission.
Broader Impacts: Many programs at the participating institutions (UC Berkeley, MIT, and Stanford and with three minority-serving institutions: Contra Costa College (CCC), Los Angeles Trade Technical College (LATTC), and Tuskegee University, international collaboration with Oxford University, the University of Toronto and the University Hong Kong and industrial partnerships with Intel, IBM, Google, Lam Research and Hewlett Packard) will be leveraged to integrate research and education programs. Among these are pre-college programs including: Summer High School Apprenticeship Program for rising high school seniors (UC Berkeley), Pre-College Engineering Academy for 11th and 12th grade high school students (UC Berkeley), Saturday Engineering Enrichment and Discovery Program (MIT), Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science Program at the undergraduate level (MIT), the Transfer-To-Excellence Program for community college students (UC Berkeley), E3S Center Summer Research Program for community college students, the Summer Undergraduate Program in Engineering Research at UC Berkeley, and the MIT Summer Research Program for minority students. A Graduate Student Council will be formed to develop student leadership skills. A Graduate Student Rotation Program will benefit students as well as enhance synergy among the four proposed research themes. At the postgraduate level, university postdoctoral fellows programs will be leveraged to recruit minority and female faculty. The Center plans to disseminate research results and activities to a broader audience to increase energy awareness through weekly energy forums and monthly lectures in the San Francisco Bay area, and plans to implement a comprehensive evaluation and assessment plan for the Center?s research and education activities.
