3D Microchips for More Powerful and Environmentally-Friendly Computers
The world of IT pursues its race for performance. CMOSAIC could boost the computing performance of central processors by a factor 10 while consuming less energy. The IBM Research Laboratory has joined EPFL and ETH Zurich - the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology – in this project of national scope supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) via its Nano-Tera programme.
3D microprocessors cooled from the inside through channels as thin as a human hair filled with a liquid coolant. Such is the solution currently being developed by researchers from the EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and its sister organisation ETH Zurich to boost the performance of future computers. The CMOSAIC project, under the leadership of John R. Thome in Lausanne, aims to develop processors 10 times more powerful with as many transistors per cubic centimetre as there are neurons in the same volume of a human brain – a functional density greater than ever before. IBM has just signed a partnership to join the adventure. Its Zurich-based lab will work together with the researchers from the Lausanne and Zurich Federal Institutes of Technology. (more…)
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New, Efficient Transistor Could One Day Power Laptops, Cars
Gallium nitride crystals
A Cornell researcher has created an extremely efficient transistor made from a material that may soon replace silicon as king of semiconductors for power applications.
Junxia Shi, a graduate student in the laboratory of Lester Eastman, the John Given Foundation Professor of Engineering, developed the gallium nitride-based device, which could form the basis for the circuitry in products from laptops to hybrid vehicles to windmills to other power electronic systems.
The patent-pending device is a basic electrical switch made from the compound gallium nitride, a material with unique electrical properties that Eastman and colleagues have been studying for more than a decade. Research on their recent breakthrough was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters (July 28, 2009).
The new transistor’s on-resistance, or measure of resistance to electric current, is 10 to 20 times lower than today’s silicon-based power devices. It also has a high breakdown voltage, which is a measure of how much voltage can be applied across a material before it fails. (more…)
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Nanowires Key to Future Transistors, Electronics
By Emil Venere
Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became "supersaturated" with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)
A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
The researchers have learned how to create nanowires with layers of different materials that are sharply defined at the atomic level, which is a critical requirement for making efficient transistors out of the structures.
“Having sharply defined layers of materials enables you to improve and control the flow of electrons and to switch this flow on and off,” said Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering at Purdue.
Electronic devices are often made of “heterostructures,” meaning they contain sharply defined layers of different semiconducting materials, such as silicon and germanium. Until now, however, researchers have been unable to produce nanowires with sharply defined silicon and germanium layers. Instead, this transition from one layer to the next has been too gradual for the devices to perform optimally as transistors.
The new findings point to a method for creating nanowire transistors.
The findings are detailed in a research paper appearing Friday (Nov. 27) in the journal Science. The paper was written by Purdue postdoctoral researcher Cheng-Yen Wen, Stach, IBM materials scientists Frances Ross, Jerry Tersoff and Mark Reuter at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y, and Suneel Kodambaka, an assistant professor at UCLA’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Whereas conventional transistors are made on flat, horizontal pieces of silicon, the silicon nanowires are “grown” vertically. Because of this vertical structure, they have a smaller footprint, which could make it possible to fit more transistors on an integrated circuit, or chip, Stach said. (more…)
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Nuclear Fusion Research Key to Advancing Computer Chips
by Emil Venere
Nuclear engineer Ahmed Hassanein works at his Purdue lab, where researchers are adapting the same methods used in fusion-energy research to develop a new type of "nanolithography" for creating future computer chips. (Purdue University photo/Vincent Walter)
Researchers are adapting the same methods used in fusion-energy research to create extremely thin plasma beams for a new class of “nanolithography” required to make future computer chips.
Current technology uses ultraviolet light to create the fine features in computer chips in a process called photolithography, which involves projecting the image of a mask onto a light-sensitive material, then chemically etching the resulting pattern.
New nanolithography will be needed to continue advances in computer technology and to extend Moore’s law, an unofficial rule stating that the number of transistors on integrated circuits, or chips, doubles about every 18 months.
“We can’t make devices much smaller using conventional lithography, so we have to find ways of creating beams having more narrow wavelengths,” said Ahmed Hassanein, the Paul L. Wattelet Professor of Nuclear Engineering and head of Purdue’s School of Nuclear Engineering. (more…)
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Fundamental Flaw in Transistor Noise Theory Limits Low-Power Chip Development
Chip manufacturers beware: There’s a newfound flaw in our understanding of transistor noise, a phenomenon affecting the electronic on-off switch that makes computer circuits possible. According to the engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who discovered the problem, it will soon stand in the way of creating more efficient, lower-powered devices like cell phones and pacemakers unless we solve it.
While exploring transistor behavior, the team found evidence that a widely accepted model explaining errors caused by electronic “noise” in the switches does not fit the facts. A transistor must be made from highly purified materials to function; defects in these materials, like rocks in a stream, can divert the flow of electricity and cause the device to malfunction. This, in turn, makes it appear to fluctuate erratically between “on” and “off” states. For decades, the engineering community has largely accepted a theoretical model that identifies these defects and helps guide designers’ efforts to mitigate them. (more…)
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Self-assembled Nanowires Could Make Chips Smaller and Faster
Electrical and computer engineering professor Xiuling Li, left, and graduate research assistant Seth Fortuna have found a new way to make transistors smaller and faster. The technique uses self-assembled, self-aligned, and defect-free nanowire channels made of gallium arsenide. (Photo by L. Brian Stauffer)
Researchers at the University of Illinois have found a new way to make transistors smaller and faster. The technique uses self-assembled, self-aligned, and defect-free nanowire channels made of gallium arsenide.
In a paper to appear in the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) journal Electron Device Letters, U. of I. electrical and computer engineering professor Xiuling Li and graduate research assistant Seth Fortuna describe the first metal-semiconductor field-effect transistor fabricated with a self-assembled, planar gallium-arsenide nanowire channel.
(more…)
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Researchers Find Better Way to Manufacture Fast Computer Chips
By Pam Frost Gorder
“Graphene has huge potential -- it’s been dubbed ‘the new silicon,’” said Padture, who is also director of Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials.
Engineers at Ohio State University are developing a technique for mass producing computer chips made from the same material found in pencils.
Experts believe that graphene — the sheet-like form of carbon found in graphite pencils — holds the key to smaller, faster electronics. It might also deliver quantum mechanical effects that could enable new kinds of electronics.
Until now, most researchers could only create tiny graphene devices one at a time, and only on traditional silicon oxide substrates. They couldn’t control where they placed the devices on the substrate, and had to connect them to other electronics one at a time for testing.
In a paper published in the March 26 issue of the journal Advanced Materials, Nitin Padture and his colleagues describe a technique for stamping many graphene sheets onto a substrate at once, in precise locations. (more…)
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MIT: New Material Could Lead to Faster Chips
EECS assistant professors Tomás Palacios, left, and Jing Kong examine oscilloscope traces showing the doubling in frequency of an electromagnetic signal processed through their experimental graphene microchip. (Photo Donna Coveney/ Courtesy of MIT)
New research findings at MIT could lead to microchips that operate at much higher speeds than is possible with today’s standard silicon chips, leading to cell phones and other communications systems that can transmit data much faster.
The key to the superfast chips is the use of a material called graphene, a form of pure carbon that was first identified in 2004. Researchers at other institutions have already used the one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms to make prototype transistors and other simple devices, but the latest MIT results could open up a range of new applications.
The MIT researchers built an experimental graphene chip known as a frequency multiplier, meaning it is capable of taking an incoming electrical signal of a certain frequency — for example, the clock speed that determines how fast a computer chip can carry out its computations — and producing an output signal that is a multiple of that frequency. In this case, the MIT graphene chip can double the frequency of an electromagnetic signal. (more…)
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