p2pnet - rss feed: Circuit on a molecule
p2p news / p2pnet: IBM researchers have built an electronic circuit around a carbon nanotube molecule, says the magazine Science.
Quoted in the New York Times, the story has researchers saying they think it will make it possible to continue to scale down component size after the middle of the next decade, when today’s technologies are expected to reach fundamental limits.
"This is the first time that a single carbon nanotube has been used to make an integrated electronic circuit," it has Dimitri Antoniadis, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saying.
But he also says it’s still a long way from being, "competitive with silicon."
"Until now, researchers have reported molecular electronics switching speeds no higher than the kilohertz range, or thousand of times per second," says the NYT. "In contrast, today’s commercial microprocessors routinely have switching speeds of billions of times per second. The researchers report obtaining switching frequencies of 52 megahertz, which is roughly the equivalent of an Intel 486 microprocessor chip commercially available 15 years ago."
IBM recently reported that as fundamental scale limits of individual atoms and molecules are reached, its discovery of how to change the way printed circuits are ‘printed’ on chips could buy time and postpone "risky’ alternatives, saving the industry millions of dollars.
"IBM scientists have created the smallest, high-quality line patterns ever made using deep-ultraviolet (DUV, 193-nanometer) optical lithography - a technology currently used to essentially ‘print’ circuits on chips," it said.
Also See:
New York Times - Truly Micro Electronics in a Single Molecule, March 24, 2006
buy time - IBM claims chip breakthrough, February 20, 2006
