Nanoelectromechanical switching devices: Scaling toward ultimate energy efficiency and longevity

The active search for candidates of an ideal switching device for low-voltage logic and ultralow-power applications has stimulated focused explorations of contact-mode switches (relays) based on micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) [1-7]. This has been driven by the fundamental advantages that mechanical devices offer, such as ideally abrupt switching with zero off-state leakage, suitable for harsh and extreme environments, and very small footprints (e.g., particularly with NEMS). In pursuing and realizing these advantages, however, significant challenges still remain today: (i) All the high-performance mechanical switches recently demonstrated are still in the MEMS domain [2-5] and are orders of magnitude larger in size or volume (>10³ to 10⁴) than the nanoscale devices presented in this work. (ii) Most truly nanoscale contact-mode NEMS switches known to date (often based on various nanowires, cantilevers and nanotubes) still suffer from very short lifetimes.nanoscale contact-mode NEMS switches