Overview

The Midwest Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery (MIND) research team is led by the University of Notre Dame and includes Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, and University of Texas-Dallas. Collaborations also link the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

MIND research is organized around two concepts: energy-efficient devices and energy-efficient systems, with a focus on demonstrating the performance potential of tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs) and nanomagnet logic (NML).

Within the TFET work, Notre Dame and Penn State are focusing on demonstration of III-V heterojunctions and graphene transistors, with the goal of achieving higher ON-current and lower OFF-current than the Si MOSFET at supply voltages approaching 0.1 V.  Tunnel FET design is being led by the nanoelectronic modeling group at Purdue.  The University of Texas at Dallas focuses on the understanding and characterizations of impurities at the critical interfaces of the tunnel FET.

Building on the successful demonstration of fundamental building blocks for NML in MIND phase 1, researchers at Notre Dame are now working to improve performance through the development of ways to read, write, and clock nanomagnets.

The MIND research team includes experienced architects, who are collaborating with experimentalists and designers at Penn State and Notre Dame to seek better computing frameworks, with the goal of discovering applications to be pursued in NRI’s second phase.

MIND is also supporting the benchmarking efforts of the device research taking place at all four NRI Centers (INDEX, MIND, WIN, and SWAN).

In addition to funding from NRI and NIST, MIND receives support from the city of South Bend, the State of Indiana, and IBM. The City and State resources are intended to both accelerate the research and encourage the development of semiconductor businesses in Indiana.

Research Focus

The MIND Center focuses on three theme areas:

• III-V Tunnel and Graphene FETs
• NanoMagnetic Logic (NML)
• Architectures and Benchmarking of TFET and NML

Center Management

Center Director:
Alan Seabaugh/Univ. of Notre Dame

Center Operations Director:
Bob Dunn/Univ. of Notre Dame