ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a preliminary analysis of a thermally actuated nanoelectromechanical memory mechanism. Thermally actuated nanoelectromechanical memory offers low consumption and rapid write times with a data storage density comparable to existing technologies. A high-energy particle can "flip" a bit that is stored by semiconductor memory, changing a 1 to a 0, or vice versa. A potentially simpler nonvolatile memory device is the buckled-beam nanomechanical memory. To avoid accidental resetting of the spacecraft memory, the beam must be sized so that the energy of the particles does not cause buckling. Buckling time variations by the bridge length show that longer structures buckle faster. As the thickness of the bridge increases, the energy consumption increases due to an increase in the moment of inertia, leading to an increase in the buckling time. The buckling time changes relatively with the length and inversely with the total heating rate.
