A Silicon-on-Thin-Buried-Oxide CMOS Microcontroller with Embedded Atom-Switch ROM

The authors demonstrate an ultra-low-power microcontroller unit (MCU) with an embedded atom-switch ROM, which performs 0.39-V operation voltage and 18.26-pJ/cycle minimum active energy (or 18.26-μW/MHz minimum active power) at 14.3 MHz. The MCU is fabricated using an embedded atom-switch process with a hybrid silicon-on-thin-buried-oxide (SOTB) core and bulk I/O transistors. The atom switch is suitable for an ultra-low-voltage operation because of its high on/off conductance ratio. The SOTB CMOS with a body-bias voltage control realizes a high operation frequency of 40 MHz at 0.54 V and an ultra-low sleep power of 0.628 μW, simultaneously.