Nano and microelectromechanical relays can be used in lieu of transistors to build digital integrated circuits that can operate with zero leakage current at high operating temperatures and radiation levels. Four-terminal (4-T) relays facilitate efficient logic circuits with greatly reduced device counts compared to three-terminal (3-T) relay implementations. Existing 4-T relays, however, require two moving contacts to simultaneously land on two stationary electrodes, which can adversely impact reliability, or have complex out-of-plane fabrication methods that can reduce yield and increase cost while having poor scalability. In this work an in-plane four-terminal relay with a single moving contact is demonstrated for the first time, through successful fabrication and characterization of prototypes with a critical dimension of 1.5 µm. Body biasing is shown to reduce the pull-in voltage of this 4-T relay compared to a 3-T relay with the same architecture and footprint. The potential of the 4-T relay to build efficient logic circuits is demonstrated by fabricating and characterizing a 1-to-2 demultiplexer (DEMUX) circuit using only two devices, a saving of eight devices over a 3-T relay implementation.

中文翻译：

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用于高效数字逻辑的单触点、四端子微机电继电器

纳米和微机电继电器可以代替晶体管来构建数字集成电路，这些集成电路可以在高工作温度和辐射水平下以零泄漏电流工作。与三端 (3-T) 继电器实施相比，四端 (4-T) 继电器大大减少了器件数量，从而促进了高效的逻辑电路。然而，现有的 4-T 继电器需要两个移动触点同时落在两个固定电极上，这会对可靠性产生不利影响，或者具有复杂的平面外制造方法，这会降低产量并增加成本，同时可扩展性差。在这项工作中，通过成功制造和表征关键尺寸为 1.5 µm 的原型，首次展示了具有单个移动触点的平面内四端子继电器。与具有相同架构和封装的 3-T 继电器相比，体偏置显示可降低此 4-T 继电器的吸合电压。4-T 继电器构建高效逻辑电路的潜力通过仅使用两个器件制造和表征 1 对 2 解复用器 (DEMUX) 电路得到证明，与 3-T 继电器实现相比节省了 8 个器件。