Scientists Create World’s First Molecular Transistor
Engineers adjusted the voltage applied via gold contacts to a benzene molecule, allowing them to raise and lower the molecule’s energy states and demonstrate that it could be used exactly like a traditional transistor at the molecular level. (Hyunwook Song and Takhee Lee)
A group of scientists has succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule. The team, which includes researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, published their findings in the December 24 issue of the journal Nature.
The team, including Mark Reed, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale, showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.
The researchers were able to manipulate the molecule’s different energy states depending on the voltage they applied to it through the contacts. By manipulating the energy states, they were able to control the current passing through the molecule.
“It’s like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule’s different energy states,” Reed said. “We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high.” In this way, the team was able to use the molecule in much the same way as regular transistors are used. (more…)
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Researchers Create Molecular Diode
by Richard Harth
This is a schematic for molecular diode. The symmetric molecule (top) allows for two-way current. The asymmetrical molecule (bottom) permits current in one direction only and acts as a single-molecule diode. (Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University)
Recently, at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, N.J. Tao and collaborators have found a way to make a key electrical component on a phenomenally tiny scale. Their single-molecule diode is described in this week’s online edition of Nature Chemistry.
In the electronics world, diodes are a versatile and ubiquitous component. Appearing in many shapes and sizes, they are used in an endless array of devices and are essential ingredients for the semiconductor industry. Making components including diodes smaller, cheaper, faster and more efficient has been the holy grail of an exploding electronics field, now probing the nanoscale realm.
Smaller size means cheaper cost and better performance for electronic devices. The first generation computer CPU used a few thousand transistors, Tao says noting the steep advance of silicon technology. “Now even simple, cheap computers use millions of transistors on a single chip.” (more…)
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Paper Battery May Power Electronics in Clothing and Packaging Material
Batteries made of paper may power electronics in the future, researchers say. Shown are images from an experimental paper-based battery. (The American Chemical Society)
Imagine a gift wrapped in paper you really do treasure and want to carefully fold and save. That’s because the wrapping paper lights up with words like “Happy Birthday” or “Happy Holidays,” thanks to a built in battery — an amazing battery made out of paper. That’s one potential application of a new battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper, being described in the October 14 issue of ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.
Albert Mihranyan and colleagues note in the report that scientists are trying to develop light, ecofriendly, inexpensive batteries consisting entirely of nonmetal parts. The most promising materials include so-called conductive polymers or “plastic electronics.” (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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Carbon Nanotubes Are Superior to Metals for Electronics
Research conducted by Cemal Basaran may make metal an obsolete component of electronics. "We are done with metals," says Basaran.
In the quest to pack ever-smaller electronic devices more densely with integrated circuits, nanotechnology researchers keep running up against some unpleasant truths: higher current density induces electromigration and thermomigration, phenomena that damage metal conductors and produce heat, which leads to premature failure of devices.
But University at Buffalo researchers who study electronics packaging recently made a pleasant discovery: that’s not the case with Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNTs). (more…)
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“Spintronics” Could Replace Electronics
Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved (the digital “one” means “an electron is present on the component”, zero means “no electron present”), here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively into the electron, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. Both are possible with a single electron pump, as scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have, together with colleagues from Latvia, now shown. They will present their results in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. (more…)
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