The computation of power requirements and write-time of thermally actuated nano-electro-mechanical memory

An integrated thermal-mechanical simulation of buckling in nano-mechanical memory is performed. The preliminary system is a bridge with a length of 20 microns, a width of 1 micron, and a thickness of 300 nm, in air with a pressure of 5 kPa. Conduction along the bridge as well as convection between the beam and the gas are considered. Simulations are performed for silicon with different dimensions. Longer structures will buckle faster at less temperature and will require less energy to actuate. However, the ideal array would use the smallest beams possible. The current work suggests the length of 20 microns for the unit of the bridge to balance these constraints. As the thickness of the bridge increases, the energy consumption increases due to an increase of moment of inertia. The buckling time increases by increasing the thickness while it decreases by increasing the width. The study of high particle energy collision shows these particles do not cause fast undesired buckling. The heat through collision dissipates in less than 10 nsec which is much smaller than the smallest buckling time.