Volatile and Non-Volatile Nanoelectromechancial Switches with Ruthenium-Enhanced Nano Contacts

Nanoelectromechanical (NEM) switches have promising applications as volatile or non-volatile electronic switching elements in areas such as low-power logic, memory, and reconfigurable circuits. However, the reliability of nano-scale contacts in NEM switches remains a major challenge. While ruthenium (Ru) has been successfully used for micro-scale contacts in radio frequency (RF) MEMS switches with relatively large dimensions, Ru has not been explored as contact coating in NEM switches. Here, we investigate and demonstrate the effectiveness of Ru-coated nano-contacts in silicon NEM switches, enabling both volatile and non-volatile switching of NEM switches fabricated within the same NEM device layer. These findings have the potential to advance NEM switch technology for low-power and reconfigurable computing applications.