Analysis of a mask-based nanowire decoder

A key challenge facing nanotechnologies will be controlling nanoarrays, two orthogonal sets of nanowires that form a crossbar, using a moderate number of mesoscale wires. Three methods have been proposed to use mesoscale wires to control individual nanowires. The first is based on nanowire differentiation during manufacture, the second makes random doped connections between nanowires and mesoscale wires, and the third, a mask-based approach, interposes high-K dielectric regions between nanowires and mesoscale wires. All three addressing schemes involve a stochastic step in their implementation. In this paper, we analyze the mask-based approach and show that a large number of mesoscale control wires is necessary for its realization.