Energy-Efficient Adhesion Controlled Microelectromechanical Volatile Memory (MVM)

The paper presents energy-efficient Microelectromechanical Volatile Memory (MVM) for modern system-on-chips. The volatile operation of the memory is integrated with an adhesion-based mechanism for a finite duration to maintain the SET state. After this duration, the memory itself goes to the RESET state thereby preserving the volatility. This is achieved using the pulsating actuation voltage contrary to the conventional continuous DC voltage. The article also highlights the design considerations for adhesion and restoring mechanisms required for designing the proposed energy-efficient volatile memory. The proposed idea is verified on a memory cell fabricated using surface micromachining. Based on the measured results, the memory cell can hold its state for 130 ms thereby decreasing the time duration of the actuation voltage to maintain the SET state. Overall, 95.65% reduction in energy consumption is quantified based on the available minimum SET pulse duration.