Low-Power Crossbar Switch With Two-Varistor Selected Complementary Atom Switch (2V-1CAS; Via-Switch) for Nonvolatile FPGA

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices Vol. 66; no. 8; pp. 3331 - 3336
• Main Authors: Banno, Naoki, Okamoto, Koichiro, Iguchi, Noriyuki, Ochi, Hiroyuki, Onodera, Hidetoshi, Hashimoto, Masanori, Sugibayashi, Tadahiko, Sakamoto, Toshitsugu, Tada, Munehiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.08.2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Atom switch; Current voltage characteristics; electrochemical reaction; Electronic devices; Field programmable gate arrays; field-programmable gate array (FPGA); nonvolatile memory; polymer solid electrolyte (PSE); reconfigurable logic; Selectivity; Semiconductor devices; Silicon; Silicon compounds; Switches; Switching circuits; Transistors; Varistors
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2019.2922352

A nonvolatile and programmable routing switch featuring two-varistor selected complementary atom switch (2V-1CAS also known as via-switch) is evaluated. The a-Si/SiN/a-Si varistor as a selector for the atom switch shows superior nonlinear current-voltage characteristics with high selectivity of ~10 5 , which originates from the staircase barrier height in the layers. The two control lines connected to the varistors realize multiple fan-outs of the crossbar switch without select transistors. The <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">50\,\,\sf \times20 </tex-math></inline-formula> crossbar switch block is demonstrated, where the atom switch is placed at each cross point and programmed through the varistors. The developed via-switch crossbar switch is a strong candidate for achieving energy-efficient nonvolatile field-programmable gate array in the Internet-of-Things applications.