Scientific Researches about Nanoelectronics
Nanoelectronics holds some answers for how we might increase the capabilities of electronics devices while we reduce their weight and power consumption. Some of the nanoelectronics areas under development, which you can explore in more detail by following the links provided in the next section, include the following topics.
Improving display screens on electronics devices. This involves reducing power consumption while decreasing the weight and thickness of the screens. Increasing the density of memory chips. Researchers are developing a type of memory chip with a projected density of one terabyte of memory per square inch or greater. Reducing the size of transistors used in integrated circuits. One researcher believes it may be possible to "put the power of all of today's present computers in the palm of your hand".
Nanoelectronics: Applications under Development :
Researchers are looking into the following nanoelectronics projects:
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Cadmium selenide nanocrystals deposited on plastic sheets have been shown to form flexible electronic circuits. Researchers are aiming for a combination of flexibility, a simple fabrication process and low power requirements.
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Integrating silicon nanophotonics components into CMOS integrated circuits. This optical technique is intended to provide higher speed data transmission between integrated circuits than is possible with electrical signals.
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Researchers at UC Berkeley have demonstrated a low power method to use nanomagnets as switches, like transistors, in electrical circuits. Their method might lead to electrical circuits with much lower power consumption than transistor based circuits.
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Researchers at Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research have developed a method to print prototype circuit boards using standard inkjet printers. Silver nanoparticle inkwas used to form the conductive lines needed in circuit boards.
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Researchers at Caltech have demonstrated a laser that uses a nanopatterned silicon surfacethat helps produce the light with much tighter frequency control than previously achieved. This may allow much higher data rates for information transmission over fiber optics.
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Researchers at Stanford University have demonstrated a method to make functioning integrated circuits using carbon nanotubes. In order to make the circuit work they developed methods to remove metallic nanotubes, leaving only semiconducting nanotubes, as well as an algorithm to deal with misaligned nanotubes. The demonstration circuit they fabricated in the university labs contains 178 functioning transistors.
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Developing a lead free solder reliable enough for space missions and other high stress environments using copper nanoparticles.
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Researchers have developed an interesting method of forming PN junctions, a key component of transistors, in graphene. They patterned the p and n regions in the substrate. When the graphene film was applied to the substrate electrons were either added or taken from the graphene, depending upon the doping of the substrate. The researchers believe that this method reduces the disruption of the graphene lattice that can occur with other methods.
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Using quantum dots to replace the fluorescent dots used in current displays. Displays using quantum dots should be simpler to make than current displays as well as use less power.
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Making integrated circuits with features that can be measured in nanometers (nm), such as the process that allows the production of integrated circuits with 22 nm wide transistor gates.
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- Researchers have developed lower power, higher density method using nanoscale magnets called magnetoelectric random access memory (MeRAM).
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Developing molecular-sized transistors which may allow us to shrink the width of transistor gates to approximately one nm which will significantly increase transistor density in integrated circuits.
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Using magnetic quantum dots in spintronic semiconductor devices. Spintronic devices are expected to be significantly higher density and lower power consumption because they measure the spin of electronics to determine a 1 or 0, rather than measuring groups of electronics as done in current semiconductor devices.
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Using nanowires made of an alloy of iron and nickel to create dense memory devices. By applying a current magnetized sections along the length of the wire. As the magnetized sections move along the wire, the data is read by a stationary sensor. This method is called race track memory.
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IMEC and Nantero are developing a memory chip that uses carbon nanotubes. This memory is labeled NRAM for Nanotube-Based Nonvolatile Random Access Memory and is intended to be used in place of high density Flash memory chips.
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Researcher have developed an organic nanoglue that forms a nanometer thick film between a computer chip and a heat sink. They report that using this nanoglue significantly increases the thermal conductance between the computer chip and the heat sink, which could help keep computer chips and other components cool.
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Researchers at Georgia Tech, the University of Tokyo and Microsoft Research have developed a method to print prototype circuit boards using standard inkjet printers. Silver nanoparticle ink was used to form the conductive lines needed in circuit boards.