Nanoelectronic modeling software NEMO5 allows engineers to optimize and design electrical devices on the nanoscale. NEMOco image.
A Purdue spinoff company, NEMOco, has created simulation software named NEMO5 that is aimed at assisting in the designs of nanoscale semiconductors. As transistors are becoming consistently smaller, the semiconductor industry can now benefit from a CAE software able to simulate at the quantum scale.
Gerhard Klimeck, electrical & computer engineering professor and founder of NEMOco, notes that these electronic devices are now small enough that the number of atoms inside can be counted.
To that point, Klimeck said, "The problem is that today's design tools don't know that atoms exist, nor do they know that electrons are quantum mechanical entities that need to be treated as such. That poses a huge challenge to the industry moving forward."
Klimeck warned that, "If the challenge to design sub-10 nanometer devices cannot be overcome, research and development efforts will not advance as they have in the past."
Research conducted at Purdue and led by Klimeck has led to the creation of NEMOco and their software NEMO5. The team designed the software to model and simulate electromagnetics at the nanometer level. These simulations could underpin future research and product development in the field.
Klimeck added that, "The new trend in the industry is to enter new materials into the design of these devices. NEMO5 allows design exploration in a virtual space where the concepts of new devices and new materials are merging … Changes in device geometries and constituent materials can be explored more rapidly in a simulation before costly and time-consuming experiments are conducted. This helps to reduce the cost of development."
Purdue researcher uses NEMO5 to study transport in sub-10nm transistors. Purdue Research Foundation photo.
The NEMOco and Klimech research group have helped over 18,000 users with over 350,000 NEMO-based simulations. These calculations were all run on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) nanoHUB. nanoHUB is an online resource for nano science and technology. NEMO5 currently powers eight nanoHUB applications.
"nanoHUB serves more than 330,000 users annually with nanotechnology seminars, tutorials and classes,” said Klimeck. “Over 13,500 users run simulations annually in this end-to-end science computing cloud without installing any software … As such, nanoHUB is a model for software-as-a-service and NEMOco will explore avenues to distribute software in such modes."
On that note, Klimeck and his team have begun to expand the business. They have contacted various software vendors for consulting services and electronic manufacturers for NEMO5 integrations.
Klimeck added, “In our research group at Purdue, we have achieved a tremendous capability of modeling next-generation transistors and second-next-generation transistors. NEMOco moves this capability into usability for a broader set of customers that has this design need … It's exciting to be at the forefront of a $300 billion global industry that needs to design these transistors."
NEMOco is one of over 20 startups to come out of Purdue’s IP over the last year. To foster such innovation, the university has licensed NEMO5 exclusively to NEMOco through the Office of Technology Commercialization.
In my opinion, it’s a much bigger carrot for University researchers if they are able to control the business born from their research. It seems Purdue made a smart move in following this trend.
Source Purdue.