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The semiconductor industry will continue to be a significant driver in the modern global economy as society becomes increasingly dependent on mobile devices, the Internet of Things (IoT) emerges, massive quantities of data generated need to be stored and analyzed, and high-performance computing develops to support vital national interests in science, medicine, engineering, technology, and industry. These applications will be enabled, in part, with ever-increasing miniaturization of semiconductor-based information processing and memory devices. Continuing to shrink device dimensions is important in order to further improve chip and system performance and reduce manufacturing cost per bit. As the physical length scales of devices approach atomic dimensions, continued miniaturization is limited by the fundamental physics of current approaches. Innovation in nanoelectronics will carry complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology to its physical limits and provide new methods and architectures to store and manipulate information into the future. The Nanoelectronics Nanotechnology Signature Initiative (NSI) was launched in July 2010 to accelerate the discovery and use of novel nanoscale fabrication processes and innovative concepts to produce revolutionary materials, devices, systems, and architectures to advance the field of nanoelectronics. The Nanoelectronics NSI white paper1 describes five thrust areas that focus the efforts of the six participating agencies2 on cooperative, interdependent R&D: 1. Exploring new or alternative state variables for computing. 2. Merging nanophotonics with nanoelectronics. 3. Exploring carbon-based nanoelectronics. 4. Exploiting nanoscale processes and phenomena for quantum information science. 5. Expanding the national nanoelectronics research and manufacturing infrastructure network.
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