Toward Carbon based NEMS

Licentiate thesis, 2009

A systematic analysis and assessment of carbon nanotube (CNT) based NEMS switches is presented and their features are compared to typical complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) performance parameters. It is shown that CNT-based switches with considerably smaller leakage current compared to CMOS switches can be realized. These switches demonstrate very small standby-power dissipation. This thesis also pays special attention to the future integration of carbon based NEMS with mainstream circuitry. It is our belief that the adoption of novel nanotechnologies are closely tied to their successful integration with CMOS technology, not only to benefit from its versatility and maturity but also to be able to present an added value to the full-fledged platform. This thesis demonstrates a relatively low temperature direct current plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (dc PECVD) process capable of growing vertically aligned carbon nanofiber-like structures with negligible deterioration of bulk CMOS transistors’ functionality. A main feature of this thesis is the toolbox composed of analytical and computational components to design and simulate a single-pair VACNF based system. Nanoelectromechanical devices based on this building block have been fabricated. The inherent discharging problem of dc PECVD synthesis method is addressed and resolved. Moreover, two different methods are proposed to extract the Young’s modulus of the synthesized vertically aligned carbon nanofibers.