DIELECTROPHORETIC ARCHITECTURES - Bio-Inspired and Nanoscale Integrated Computing - page 155

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DIELECTROPHORETIC
ARCHITECTURES
Alexander D. Wissner-Gross
Electric programmability has been the basis for decades of advances in integrated
computer component performance. However, once fabricated or assembled, such
components—whether blade servers in a data center or microprocessors on a
circuit board—are typically stuck in place and require human intervention for
reconfiguration, removal, or replacement. For continued advances at the archi-
tectural level, mechanical programmability of components may also be needed.
One generally promising approach for electromechanical manipulation at the
nanoscale and microscale is dielectrophoresis, or the net force experienced by a
neutral dielectric object in a nonuniform electric field. In this chapter, we review
recent advances in dielectrophoretic architectures for computation, focusing
particularly on the experimental demonstration of fully reconfigurable nanowire
interconnects.
Programmability in electronic systems originates from the ability to form and
reform nonvolatile connections. Devices in modern programmable architectures
typically derive this ability from controlled internal changes in material composi-
tion or charge distribution [1]. However, for ''bottom-up'' nanoelectronic systems it
may be advantageous to derive programmability not only from internal state, but
also from the mechanical manipulation of mobile components. Proposed applica-
tions that require component mobility include neuromorphic networks of nanos-
tructure-based artificial synapses [2], breadboards for rapid prototyping of
nanodevice circuits [3, 4], and fault-tolerant logic in which broken subsystems are
replaced automatically from a reservoir [5]. In this chapter, we review recent
advances in dielectrophoretic architectures for enabling such computational com-
ponent mobility, focusing particularly on the experimental demonstration of fully
reconfigurable nanowire interconnects—the simplest nanoelectronic components.