Towards the use of functionality-enhanced devices: A transversal design approach

Summary form only given. Exploiting unconventional physical properties, several nanodevices showed an alternative to Moore´s Law by the increase of their functionality rather than the pure scaling. Innovative device behaviors transduce to new circuit/architecture opportunities. Here, we focus on a novel class of computation devices that exhibit controllable-polarity property. At advanced technology nodes, Schottky contacts at channel interfaces are becoming challenging to avoid. Hence, devices face an ambipolar behavior, i.e, that the device exhibits n- and p-type characteristics simultaneously. Such a property is desirable for logic computation. Indeed, it has been recently demonstrated by EPFL that by constructing independent double-gate structures on Vertically stacked nanowires FETs (NWFETs), the device polarity can be electrostatically forced to be either n- or p-type. Controllable-polarity devices are logical bi-conditional on both gate values and enable a compact realization of XOR-based logic functions, which are not implementable in CMOS in a compact form. Hyper regular architectures and new EDA tools are then needed to leverage the intrinsic properties of controllable-polarity devices from an application perspective. In this talk, I will cover the different aspects of the design with controllable-polarity devices ranging from device fabrication to logic synthesis tools, and I will emphasize on the work organization and importance for interdisciplinary teams in the field of emerging technologies.