Sasikanth Manipatruni is an American engineer and inventor in the fields of
Computer engineering
Computer engineering (CoE or CpE) is a branch of electrical engineering and computer science that integrates several fields of computer science and electronic engineering required to develop computer hardware and software. Computer engineers ...
,
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
technology,
Materials Engineering and
semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are pres ...
.
Manipatruni contributed to developments in
silicon photonics
Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commo ...
,
spintronics
Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-sta ...
and
quantum materials.
Manipatruni is a co-author of 50 research papers and ~400 patents (cited about 7500 times
) in the areas of electro-optic modulators,
Cavity optomechanics,
nanophotonics
Nanophotonics or nano-optics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, and of the interaction of nanometer-scale objects with light. It is a branch of optics, optical engineering, electrical engineering, and nanotechnology. It ...
& optical interconnects,
spintronics
Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-sta ...
, and new logic devices for extension of
Moore's law
Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empir ...
.
His work has appeared in Nature, Nature Physics, Nature communications, Science advances and Physical Review Letters.
Early life and education
Manipatruni received a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics from
IIT Delhi
The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is a public institute of technology located in New Delhi, India. It is one of the 23 IITs created to be Centres of Excellence for training, research and development in science, engineering and technolo ...
in 2005 where he graduated with the institute silver medal. He also completed research under the
Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana at
Indian Institute of Science working at
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and in
optimal control
Optimal control theory is a branch of mathematical optimization that deals with finding a control for a dynamical system over a period of time such that an objective function is optimized. It has numerous applications in science, engineering and ...
at
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Zurich
(colloquially)
, former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule
, image = ETHZ.JPG
, image_size =
, established =
, type = Public
, budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021)
, rector = Günther Dissertori
, president = Joël Mesot
, ac ...
.
Research career
Manipatruni received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with minor in applied engineering physics from
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
.
The title of his thesis was "Scaling silicon nanophotonic interconnects : silicon electrooptic modulators, slowlight & optomechanical devices".
His thesis advisors were
Michal Lipson
Michal Lipson (born 1970) is an American physicist known for her work on silicon photonics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2019, Lipson was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow for contributions to silicon photonics especially towa ...
and
Alexander Gaeta at Cornell University. He has co-authored academic research with
Michal Lipson
Michal Lipson (born 1970) is an American physicist known for her work on silicon photonics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2019, Lipson was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow for contributions to silicon photonics especially towa ...
,
Alexander Gaeta,
Keren Bergman,
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Ramamoorthy Ramesh (born 1960) is an American materials scientist of Indian descent who has contributed to the synthesis, assembly and understanding of complex functional oxides, such as ferroelectric materials. In particular, he has worked on ...
,
Lane W. Martin,
Naresh Shanbhag, Jian-Ping Wang,
Paul McEuen
Paul McEuen (born 1963) is an American physicist. He received his B.S. in engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma (1985), and his Ph.D. in applied physics at Yale University (1991). After postdoctoral work at MIT (1990–1991), he became ...
,
Christopher J. Hardy
Christopher J. Hardy (born 1955) is an American physicist and inventor of several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) subsystem technologies for use in real time MRI and cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy.
Biography
Hardy obtained his Ph.D. from ...
, Felix Casanova,
Ehsan Afshari,
Alyssa Apsel, Jacob T. Robinson,
:fr:Manuel Bibes spanning
Condensed matter physics
Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...
,
Electronics
The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...
and devices,
Photonics,
Circuit theory,
Computer architecture and hardware for
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
areas.
Silicon optical links
Manipatruni's PhD thesis was focused on developing the then nascent field of silicon photonics by progressively scaling the speed of electro-optic modulation from 1 GHz to 12.5 Gbit/s, 18 Gbit/s and 50 Gbit/s on a single physical optical channel driven by a silicon photonic component. The significance of silicon for optical uses can be understood as follows: nearly 95% of modern
Integrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
technology is based on silicon-based semiconductors which have high productivity in
Semiconductor device fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are pres ...
due to the use of large single crystal wafers and extraordinary control of the quality of the interfaces. However,
Photonic integrated circuit
A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components which form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated c ...
s are still majorly manufactured using
III-V compound semiconductor
Semiconductor materials are nominally small band gap insulators. The defining property of a semiconductor material is that it can be compromised by doping it with impurities that alter its electronic properties in a controllable way.
Because of t ...
materials and
II-VI semiconductor compound II-VI semiconductor compounds are compounds composed of a metal from either group 2 or 12 of the periodic table (the alkaline earth metals and group 12 element
Group 12, by modern IUPAC numbering, is a group of chemical elements in the periodic ...
materials, whose engineering lags silicon industry by several decades (judged by number of wafers and devices produced per year). By showing that silicon can be used as a material to turn light signal on and off, silicon electro-optic modulators allow for use of high-quality engineering developed for the electronics industry to be adopted for photonics/optics industry. This the foundational argument used by silicon electro-optics researchers. This work was paralleled closely at leading industrial research groups at Intel, IBM and Luxtera during 2005–2010 with industry adopting and improving various methods developed at academic research labs. Manipatruni's work showed that it is practically possible to develop free carrier injection modulators (in contrast to carrier depletion modulators) to reach high speed modulation by engineering injection of free carriers via pre-amplification and back-to-back connected injection mode devices.

In combination with
Keren Bergman at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, micro-ring modulator research led to demonstration of a number of firsts in long-distance uses of silicon photonics utilizing silicon based injection mode electro-optic modulators including first demonstration of long-haul transmission using silicon microring modulators first Error-free transmission of microring-modulated BPSK, First Demonstration of 80-km Long-Haul Transmission of 12.5-Gb/s Data Using Silicon Microring Resonator Electro-Optic Modulator, First Experimental Bit-Error-Rate Validation of 12.5-Gb/s Silicon Modulator Enabling Photonic Networks-on-Chip. These academic results have been applied into products widely deployed at Cisco, Intel.
Application for omputing and medical imaging
Manipatruni, Lipson and collaborators at
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
have projected a roadmap that required the use of Silicon micro-ring modulators to meet the bandwidth, linear bandwidth density (bandwidth/cross section length) and area bandwidth density (bandwidth/area) of on-die communication links. While originally considered thermally unstable, by early 2020's micro-ring modulators have received wide adoption for computing needs at Intel Ayar Labs, Global foundries and varied optical interconnect usages.

The optimal energy of an on-die optical link is written
as : where
is the optimal detector voltage (maintaining the bit error rate),
detector capacitance,
is the modulator drive voltage,
are the electrooptic volume of the optical cavity being stabilized, refractive index change to carrier concentration and spectral sensitivity of the device to refractive index change
is the change in optical transmission, B is the bandwidth of the link, Ptune the power to keep the resonator operational and B the bandwidth of the link at F frequency of the data being serialized.
Manipatruni and
Christopher J. Hardy
Christopher J. Hardy (born 1955) is an American physicist and inventor of several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) subsystem technologies for use in real time MRI and cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy.
Biography
Hardy obtained his Ph.D. from ...
applied integrated photonic links to the
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio wave ...
to improve the signal collection rate from the MRI machines via the signal collection coils while working at the
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
's
GE Global Research
GE Research is the research and development division of General Electric. GE Global Research locations include:
* Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, established as the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady in 1900 and ...
facility. The use of optical transduction of the MRI signals can allow significantly higher signal collection arrays within the MRI system increasing the signal throughput, reducing the time to collect the image and overall reduction of the weight of the coils and cost of MRI imaging by reducing the imaging time.
Cavity optomechanics and optical radiation pressure
Manipatruni proposed the first observation that optical
radiation pressure leads to non-reciprocity in micro cavity opto-mechanics in 2009
in the classical electro-magnetic domain without the use of magnetic isolators. In classical Newtonian optics, it was understood that light rays must be able to retrace their path through a given combination of optical media. However, once the momentum of light is taken into account inside a movable media this need not be true in all cases. This work
proposed that breaking of the reciprocity (i.e. properties of media for forward and backward moving light can be violated) is observable in microscale optomechanical systems due to their small mass, low mechanical losses and high amplification of light due to long confinement times.
Later work has established the breaking of reciprocity in a number of nanophotonic conditions including time modulation and parametric effects in cavities. Manipatruni and Lipson have also applied the nascent devices in silicon photonics to optical synchronization
and generation of non-classical beams of light using optical non-linearities.
Memory and spintronic devices

Manipatruni worked on
Spintronics
Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-sta ...
for the development of logic computing devices for computational nodes beyond the existing limits to silicon-based transistors. He developed an extended modified nodal analysis that uses vector circuit theory for spin-based currents and voltages using modified nodal analysis which allows the use of spin components inside VLSI designs used widely in the industry. The circuit modeling is based on theoretical work by
Supriyo Datta
Supriyo Datta (born 1954) is an Indian born American researcher and author. A leading figure in the modeling and understanding of nano-scale electronic conduction, he has been called "one of the most original thinkers in the field of nanoscale ...
and
Gerrit E. W. Bauer. Manipatruni's spin circuit models were extensively applied for development of spin logic circuits, spin interconnects,
domain wall interconnects and benchmarking logic and memory devices utilizing spin and magnetic circuits.
In 2011, utilizing the discovery of
Spin Hall effect
The spin Hall effect (SHE) is a transport phenomenon predicted by Russian physicists Mikhail I. Dyakonov and Vladimir I. Perel in 1971. It consists of the appearance of spin accumulation on the lateral surfaces of an electric current-carrying samp ...
and
Spin–orbit interaction
In quantum physics, the spin–orbit interaction (also called spin–orbit effect or spin–orbit coupling) is a relativistic interaction of a particle's spin with its motion inside a potential. A key example of this phenomenon is the spin–orbi ...
in heavy metals from Robert Buhrman, Daniel Ralph and Ioan Miron
in
Period 6 element
A period 6 element is one of the chemical elements in the sixth row (or ''period'') of the periodic table of the elements, including the lanthanides. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemic ...
transition metals
Manipatruni proposed an integrated spin-hall effect memory (Later named Spin-Orbit Memory to comprehend the complex interplay of interface and bulk components of the spin current generation) combined with modern
Fin field-effect transistor
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, f ...
transistors to address the growing difficulty with embedded
Static random-access memory in modern
Semiconductor process technology
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are pres ...
. SOT-MRAM for SRAM replacement spurred significant research and development leading to successful demonstration of SOT-MRAM combined with
Fin field-effect transistor
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, f ...
s in
22 nm process
The 22 nm node is the process step following 32 nm in CMOS MOSFET semiconductor device fabrication. The typical half-pitch (i.e., half the distance between identical features in an array) for a memory cell using the process is around 22 n ...
and
14 nm process
The 14 nm process refers to the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the 22nm (or 20nm) node. The 14nm was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about 2011, the node following 22nm was expe ...
at various foundries.
Working with Jian-Ping Wang, Manipatruni and collaborators were able to show evidence of a 4th elemental ferro-magnet. Given the rarity of ferro-magnetic materials in elemental form at room temperature, use of a less rare element can help with the adoption of permanent magnet based driven systems for electric vehicles.
Computational logic devices and quantum materials
In 2016, Manipatruni and collaborators proposed a number of changes to the new logic device development by identifying the core criterion for the logic devices for utilization beyond the
2 nm process
In semiconductor manufacturing, the 2 nm process is the next MOSFET (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) die shrink after the 3 nm process node. , TSMC is expected to begin production sometime after 2023; Intel also forecasts ...
.
The continued slow down the Moore's law as evidenced by slow down of the voltage scaling, lithographic node scaling and increasing cost per wafer and complexity of the fabs indicated that Moore's law as it existed in the 2000-2010 era has changed to a less aggressive scaling paradigm.

Manipatruni proposed
that spintronic and multiferroic systems are leading candidates for achieving attojoule-class logic gates for computing, thereby enabling the continuation of Moore's law for transistor scaling. However, shifting the materials focus of computing towards oxides and topological materials requires a holistic approach addressing energy, stochasticity and complexity.
The Manipaturni Figure-of-Merit for computational quantum materials is defined as the ratio of "
energy to switch a device at room temperature" to "
energy of thermodynamic stability of the materials compared to vacuum energy, where
is the reversal of the order parameter such as ferro-electric polarization or magnetization of the material"
This ratio is universally optimal for a ferro-electric material and compared favorably to spintronic and CMOS switching elements such as MOS transistors and BJTs. The framework (adopted by SIA decadal plan) describes a unified computing framework that uses physical scaling (physics based improvement in device energy and density), mathematical scaling (using information theoretic improvements to allow higher error rate as devices scale to thermodynamic limits) and complexity scaling (architectural scaling that moves from distinct memory & logic units to AI based architectures). Combining Shannon inspired computing allows the physical stochastic errors inherent in highly scaled devices to be mitigated by information theoretic techniques.
Magneto-electric spin-orbit logic is a design using this methodology for a new logical component that couples magneto-electric effect and spin orbit effects. Compared to CMOS, MESO circuits could potentially require less energy for switching, lower operating voltage, and a higher integration density.
Selected publications and patents
*Manipatruni, Sasikanth; Nikonov, Dmitri E.; Lin, Chia-Ching; Gosavi, Tanay A.; Liu, Huichu; Prasad, Bhagwati; Huang, Yen-Lin; Bonturim, Everton;
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Ramamoorthy Ramesh (born 1960) is an American materials scientist of Indian descent who has contributed to the synthesis, assembly and understanding of complex functional oxides, such as ferroelectric materials. In particular, he has worked on ...
; Young, Ian A. (2018-12-03). "Scalable energy-efficient magnetoelectric spin–orbit logic". ''Nature''. 565 (7737): 35–42.
doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0770-2.
ISSN
An International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a magazine. The ISSN is especially helpful in distinguishing between serials with the same title. ISSNs ...
0028-0836
*Manipatruni, S., Nikonov, D.E. and Young, I.A., 2018. Beyond CMOS computing with spin and polarization. Nature Physics, 14(4), pp. 338–343
*Manipatruni, S., Nikonov, D.E. and Young, I.A., 2014. Energy-delay performance of giant spin Hall effect switching for dense magnetic memory. Applied Physics Express, 7(10), p. 103001.
*Manipatruni, S., Nikonov, D.E. and Young, I.A., 2012. Modeling and design of spintronic integrated circuits. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers, 59(12), pp. 2801–2814.
*Pham, V.T., Groen, I., Manipatruni, S., Choi, W.Y., Nikonov, D.E., Sagasta, E., Lin, C.C., Gosavi, T.A., Marty, A., Hueso, L.E. and Young, I.A., 2020. Spin–orbit magnetic state readout in scaled ferromagnetic/heavy metal nanostructures. Nature Electronics, 3(6), pp. 309–315.
*Chen, Z., Chen, Z., Kuo, C.Y., Tang, Y., Dedon, L.R., Li, Q., Zhang, L., Klewe, C., Huang, Y.L., Prasad, B. and Farhan, A., 2018. Complex strain evolution of polar and magnetic order in multiferroic BiFeO3 thin films. Nature communications, 9(1), pp. 1–9.
*Xu, Q., Manipatruni, S., Schmidt, B., Shakya, J. and Lipson, M., 2007. 12.5 Gbit/s carrier-injection-based silicon micro-ring silicon modulators. Optics express, 15(2), pp. 430–436.
*Manipatruni, S., Nikonov, D.E., Lin, C.C., Prasad, B., Huang, Y.L., Damodaran, A.R., Chen, Z., Ramesh, R. and Young, I.A., 2018. Voltage control of unidirectional anisotropy in ferromagnet-multiferroic system. Science advances, 4(11), p.eaat4229.
*Zhang, M., Wiederhecker, G.S., Manipatruni, S., Barnard, A., McEuen, P. and Lipson, M., 2012. Synchronization of micromechanical oscillators using light. Physical review letters, 109(23), p. 233906.
*Manipatruni, S., Robinson, J.T. and Lipson, M., 2009. Optical nonreciprocity in optomechanical structures. Physical review letters, 102(21), p. 213903.
*Fang, M.Y.S., Manipatruni, S., Wierzynski, C., Khosrowshahi, A. and DeWeese, M.R., 2019. Design of optical neural networks with component imprecisions. Optics Express, 27(10), pp. 14009–14029.
*Chen, L., Preston, K., Manipatruni, S. and Lipson, M., 2009. Integrated GHz silicon photonic interconnect with micrometer-scale modulators and detectors. Optics express, 17(17), pp. 15248–15256.
*Dutt, A., Luke, K., Manipatruni, S., Gaeta, A.L., Nussenzveig, P. and Lipson, M., 2015. On-chip optical squeezing. Physical Review Applied, 3(4), p. 044005.
AI and in-memory computing
*Korgaonkar, K., Bhati, I., Liu, H., Gaur, J., Manipatruni, S., Subramoney, S., Karnik, T., Swanson, S., Young, I. and Wang, H., 2018, June. Density tradeoffs of non-volatile memory as a replacement for SRAM based last level cache. In 2018 ACM/IEEE 45th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) (pp. 315–327). IEEE.
*Pipeline circuit architecture to provide in-memory computation functionality, US20190057050A1
*Low synch dedicated accelerator with in-memory computation capability, US20190056885A1
*In-memory analog neural cache, US20190057304A1,
See also
*
Michal Lipson
Michal Lipson (born 1970) is an American physicist known for her work on silicon photonics. A member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2019, Lipson was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow for contributions to silicon photonics especially towa ...
*
Christopher J. Hardy
Christopher J. Hardy (born 1955) is an American physicist and inventor of several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) subsystem technologies for use in real time MRI and cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy.
Biography
Hardy obtained his Ph.D. from ...
*
Keren Bergman
*
Silicon photonics
Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commo ...
*
Magneto-Electric Spin-Orbit logic
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sasikanth, Manipatruni
American engineers
Cornell University alumni
American computer scientists
Scientists from Andhra Pradesh
Telugu people
21st-century American engineers
Indian company founders
Indian emigrants to the United States
IIT Delhi alumni
ETH Zurich alumni
Scientists from Schenectady, New York
1984 births
Living people
Computer hardware engineers