Circuit Implementation Using Emerging Technologies: Enabling energy-efficient electronics for biomedical and power management applications

Silicon transistor scaling with Moore's law has been pushing the limit to provide enormous area and power benefits for circuits and systems over the decades. Emerging technologies can disrupt and add new features to silicon chips that further push for miniaturization and energy efficiency. These emerging technologies range from 1) new flexible materials such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), 2) new fabrication methodologies for integrating high-density capacitors and magnetics on chip, 3) new biomedical devices such as gastric acid batteries, and 4) new circuit implementations of energy-efficient computing chips, such as neural networks implementation using switched-capacitor multiply and accumulate units (MACUs), and 5) batteryless and wireless microimplants for cross-tissue operation. These technologies present opportunities and challenges for innovative circuit design to achieve higher energy efficiency for extended device-operation time, and compact form factor for both cost and area savings in the end application. © 2009-2012 IEEE.