AAAFM Materials

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is required for all integrated circuits (ICs) against ESD failures. For decades, on-chip ESD protection relies on PN-junction-based active device structures inside Si for ESD discharge, which inherently has ESD-induced parasitic effects, including capacitance, leakage, and noise, which seriously affect IC performance. Addressing the ESD design overhead is an emerging challenge for ICs at advanced technology nodes. Recently, a non-traditional graphene nano-electromechanical-system (NEMS) ESD protection structure has been explored as an alternative low-parasitic ESD protection solution for advanced ICs, which is an above-IC mechanical switch that has the potential to dramatically reduce the ESD design overhead inherent to any in-Si ESD protection structures. Benefited from its unique materials properties, graphene was also studied as interconnects for on-chip ESD protection, possibly replacing traditional metal interconnects for ICs. This paper provides an overview of recent advances in developing graphene-based on-chip ESD protection for future ICs. Statistic studies show excellent ESD protection capability of graphene NEMS (gNEMS) ESD switches, i.e., >1.5KV/µm², and graphene ESD interconnects, i.e., ~10⁸ A/cm², suggesting a potential paradigm change in on-chip ESD protection for future chips. The outlook for graphene-based ESD protection will be discussed too.

The results of studies of the influence of nano-modifiers on the appearance of dimmers of colloidal surfactants on the compressive strength of concrete and the rate of its formation are presented. It has been shown that colloidal aliphatic surfactant increases the strength of concrete. Moreover, the joint introduction of a colloidal aliphatic surfactant and traditional hydrophilic surfactants leads to an even greater increase in the strength of concrete. A significant increase in concrete strength occurs at an early age in concrete.

With today’s growing interest toward composite materials and their augmentation as part of integrated business from aerospace engineering, medical applications and others are getting more and more dependent on composite materials in recent operations. However, the most sophisticated composite materials still need to rely on the other integrated sub-sets of components. On the other hand, there are certain limitations and flaws that exist within composite materials’ component that can cause an error to grow way beyond control and can impact its main master component. These sorts of limitation and flaws would also impact the engineering targets from the perspective of resilience built into the daily operations that are also pointed out in the current article