Ultra-Fast, Low-Resistance Nano Gap Electromechanical Switch for Power Gating Applications

The growing demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing accelerates concerns over leakage power in highly integrated semiconductor systems. Power gating can reduce the leakage power by disconnecting idle logic blocks from the power supply through a sleep transistor. However, conventional metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor-based sleep transistors exhibit significant leakage currents and area overhead. As promising alternatives for power gating devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches have gained significant attention due to their near-zero off-state leakage current. Nevertheless, their practical use in power gating has been limited by a fundamental trade-off between low on-resistance and fast switching time. This study demonstrates that extreme minimization of the air gap is the key to simultaneously reducing on-resistance and switching time. By introducing a 20 nm nano air gap and high-stiffness structural design, we realize—for the first time—a MEMS switch that combines ultra-low on-resistance (0.95 Ω) with ultra-fast switching time (30 ns), while maintaining off-state leakage below 100 fA. All fabrication processes remain within the back-end-of-line thermal budget, enabling monolithic 3D integration with minimal area overhead. These results establish nano gap MEMS switches as strong candidates for power gating in next generation low-power semiconductor systems.