FuSe-TG: Physical Computing Co-Design using Three-terminal Devices

This effort focuses on educating and training undergraduate students in semiconductor-related research, starting from a co-located summer semester that will continue through the following fall and spring semesters. This planning grant focuses on building a research community enabling undergraduate students to co-design in this research space with the mentorship of graduate students and the principal Investigators (PIs.) The project includes the development of training aspects during the previous spring semester to teach, train, and empower students, as well as training graduate students on how to teach this community. This teaming grant will facilitate coordination between the team members and students to build a strong, cohesive core team among all the investigators. The technical activities will enable each PI to learn other's disciplines and identify compelling areas of future opportunity with semiconductor research. This effort looks to co-design from materials, to devices, to circuits, to initial systems using multiple three (or more) terminal Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) devices with significant overlap in expertise between the individuals to enable building community at the boundaries of these fields as well as effective co-design in these areas. The effort will train undergraduate students enabling a workforce capable of tackling future questions in co-design, as well as enabling graduate students to mentor this future workforce. This focuses initial research using Floating-Gate (FG) and Electro-Chemical RAM (ECRAM) devices, two potential components that integrate with standard Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) and provide huge physical computing opportunities as well as reducing or eliminating component mismatch. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.