Carlos Paz de Araujo, Ph.D., Distinguished CU Professor and UCCS faculty member of the UCCS Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has worked for 10 years to create a novel nonvolatile quantum switch, a unique transistor-like device that reduces the use of electric power in Artificial Intelligence (AI) memory chips by a factor of one million.
This is a significant breakthrough in the new area of “in-memory computing.” Current AI memory technologies use large amounts of energy, with the potential of doubling the US total energy use in the next five years.
Araujo has deep roots in memory research and nanotechnology, holding hundreds of worldwide patents, and being a well-known authority on memory devices and development. His specialty area has been in non-volatile memories, which led to four technologies being created at UCCS and transferred to Industry since 1984. Some of these devices have passed four billion units and are still in production.
Because of his research, Araujo’s teaching has changed in his work with undergraduate and graduate students from physics, computer science, and electrical engineering.
“Since the entire project involves new theory and experimentation, I started to teach Nanoscale Devices in our Semiconductor 2 class last semester along with the typical classic topics,” he said. “This semester, I have a course for advanced seniors and graduate students with a more in-depth focus on nano-transistors.”
So how does this help in UCCS students?
“These technologies are on par with the 2-nanometer technology of the most advanced companies in microelectronics, and still used for semiconductors in general, companies such as Micron, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC,” he explained. “Those companies are all funded by the CHIPS for America program by the U.S. government to achieve a new age of chips.”
This summer, Araujo added an undergraduate student intern to rebuild the research path to define a new area of semiconductor device physics.
Carlos Paz de Araujo is a distinguished CU Professor in the UCCS Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He started the Colorado Microelectronics conference, which became the international Integrated Ferroelectrics Conference. He founded the conference on integrated ferroelectrics which merged with the annual IEEE conference on ISAF (Integrated Symposium on Application of Ferroelectrics). He is co-editor of the Integrated Ferroelectrics journal. He is an honorary professor at both Fudan University in China and Kochi University of Technology (KUT) in Japan, and an honorary member of ITE in Japan. He has co-founded three companies, including Symetrix Corporation.
About the UCCS College of Engineering and Applied Science
The College of Engineering and Applied Science enrolls more than 1,700 students and offers 24 engineering and computer science degrees, ranging from bachelor to doctoral. The college is a Department of Homeland Security / National Security Agency Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense and works closely with the National Cybersecurity Center and with more than 250 aerospace and defense, information technology, cybersecurity and engineering organizations in the Pikes Peak region. Learn more about the College of Engineering and Applied Science at UCCS.