A Cascadable Reconfigurable Micro-electromechanical Resonator Logic Gate

Abstract

Micro and nano electromechanical resonators have recently been proposed as energy-efficient alternatives for CMOS transistors, especially in digital circuits. In this work, a micro resonator-based reprogrammable logic element is presented that can perform the fundamental logic operations, including OR, NAND, XOR, NOT and Buffer. The operation of the device is based on the selective activation/deactivation of the second vibration mode of a fixed-fixed beam. A major advantage of the proposed device is that it is cascadable due to the compatibility between the output and input signals (both are ac signals with the same frequency). This eliminates the need for additional signal conditioning circuits required for previously proposed micro-resonator-based logic gates that have DC inputs and AC output. The proposed gates are run-time reconfigurable and we show that the overall complexity of digital circuits is significantly reduced compared to standard CMOS designs, which results in a smaller area per logic function. The speed of the device can go up to MHz if designed to work with GHz resonance frequency and moderate quality factor (