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Nano-Plotters May Reduce Circuit Size
osm writes: "Using nanoplotter pens dipped into organic molecules, this device has drawn structures with lines 15 nanometers wide. This could be used to produce circuits several orders of magnitude smaller than what is currently possible. Full story is on latimes.com." Understanding the
fundamental processes of electron and ion transport and chemical reactions that occur within such films is vital to the development of new molecule-based chemical sensors, opti- cal switches, electrocatalysts, nanofabrication technology, and other electronic and photonic devices," says the Web site of Dr. Chad Mirkin, head of the team involved in this research.
anyhow, something I've not heard mentioned, but that is extremely important when dealing with wires this size is the propagation delay through the wires. under current technology, transistor speeds have already outstripped wire speeds (ie, how fast an electron can move along a wire). as wires decrease in diameter, they get slower (more resistance). definitely will be a problem if they're planning on using this technology to simply miniaturize existing hardware styles.
I am a man of const int sorrows
Modern photolithography techniques WILL work for 3d ICs if we can find out a way to grow silicon crystals on top of amorphous surfaces. The top layer of ICs is pretty much a silicon oxide, which is not a crystal structure. If we can grow a silicon crystal on top of this oxide, we can then start a new IC right on top of the old layers.
Full 3d is going to require nano-fabrication techniques: no form of lithography will cut the mustard. While painting of this kind is not the full solution, its definitely a step in the right direction.
There are of course many other challenges in 3d circuitry, cooling not least.
ISTR some work done by IBM with tiny balls that had a few hundred devices on the surface of each and were packed into a cubic array. Does anyone know where that went?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Unfortunately what happens at about 0.05 microns is that wires pressed that close together form a structure know as a Josephson Junction (a magnetic flux-sensitive quantum barrier). Under certain conditions, electrons can arbitrarily jump from one wire to another, depending on the exact number of flux quanta mediating the junction at the time. Unfortunately in a standard work environment, controlling magnetic fields to the level of quanta is next to impossible, thus setting an upper limit on the coherence of classical circuitry at the sub .05 micron limit. This was my initial assertion and it still stands, despite insubstantial denials.
That is, of course, not to say however that there will be no further progress along the road of computing. Quantum effects may one day prove to be the saviour of computing, and time will off course tell whether we ultimately have a quantum computer sitting on our desks in ten years time.
However, you all know as well as I do that Moore's law is coming to an end, and to attempt to deny that without sound scientific reasoning seems to me like a bad case of denial.
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Sir, In many industries we are already there. I work with a firm that spends a great deal of time with rotary dynamics. Currently we are nowhere near the quantum barrier however, the leaps made in using the 1860' rotaryfan algorithms in applied dynamics is producing tremendous results. The industry standard components you referenced are still the baseline, however when implemented with non-standard power and AI systems to control them, (sort of a neural network) the performance of the rotary response is greatly acheived. We were close to reaching the hof threasholds, however the glass ceiling we were shooting for was re-assessed and it looks like we have a bit further to go. In any event the SE architechture does appear to have great advantages over conventional methods.
Regards
No, I'm not denying that the end of Moore's law is inevitable given current production techniques and circuit technology, rather I'm saying that there will be new developments which will allow us to continue using the same basic model of circuitry without going to a radically different architecture, such as quantum computing.
See this article for an example of a component which rather than being hampered by quantum effects, instead relies on them to work. There are other similar efforts underway, I think IBM are working on similar projects, and I think that by the time Moore's law ends we'll have the basis for a new kind of electronic circuit based on the same general principles, but different component architectures.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Are those like optical switches.. or do they have less 'cal' and more 'opti'?
Sigh. Another molecular electronics thread...
/.).
OK, so several other people have mentioned the main point--you can't think of these as continuing normal electronics. It's a whole different world because you're not using bulk properties anymore. Current silicon transistors would break down around 5 atoms or so (there are a number of papers pointing towards this barrier and I think a few have been posted to
So you're now thinking about charge carried through a molecule. But here's the problem with trying to make circuits out of these. How do you connect your wires?
It's the interconnects that's the real problem.
People like Dekker have shown that you can get conduction across carbon nanotubes or DNA or other single molecules. But the trick is getting the "wires" to stick together so you can actually do something useful.
Yes, Mirkin's nanoplotter research is interesting. But you can't use it to lay out circuits until you get good molecular wires and good interconnects.
My gut feeling is that self-assembly, perhaps in combination with something like a nanoplotter, is the best way to do an interconnect. But hey, I'm only a grad student... What do I know. >:-)
-Geoff
Ah, yes, of course. And we will never get any useful amount of energy from atoms, and space travel is utter bunk, and there's a world market for maybe five computers. And an operating system written by unpaid amateurs could never compete with MS-Windows.
There's a jargon file entry that mentions "a paper from the late 1970s that computed a purported ultimate limit on areal density for ICs that was in fact less than the routine densities of 5 years later."
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You are in a twisty little maze of open source licenses, all different.
This technology will probably have limited use in producing circuits that are ever finer, as this takes you well into the realm of unpredictable quantum effects, where circuits can no longer be guaranteed to behave in a predictable way.
I'm going to have to disagree with that last statement. Sure, at the scales we're talking about here quantum effects come into play, but they're hardly unpredictable. Unless we're talking about individual quantum processes, the outcome of which is indeed probabalistic then we can statistically predict what will happen with a large number of quantum processes, which is what will be taking place at this level.
So I doubt that quantum mechanics will really form that much of a barrier to the size of circuitry. It'll require a new methodology and new techniques to be sure, but it's hardly like it'll be impossible to make some analog of electronic circuits at very small scales.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
A significant problem with smaller circuit sizes is that voltages have to be reduced, the smaller things get. This is to aviod temperature build-up and also to reduce the potential for electrons to drift out of their tracks at corners (or indeed move tracks, similarly to the way rivers move and change when they bend)
As voltages are reduced, the signal to noise ratio is decreased and it becomes more dificult to distungish between them - this is then compounded by quantum effects that further reduce signal to noise ratios by (amongst other possibilities) reducing a signal (by tunnelling etc) or even boosting a 'zero' signal so high it gets picked up as a '1'
This can be avioded by clever circuit design but it is a fundamental limiting factor although hitting the eventual limit will be complicated by such things as voltage, heat dissipation (too much heat will affect smaller tracks more than larger ones) and feature size.
hohom
Troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
Holy cow. I can't even start to imagine what kind of precautions we're going to need to use to prevent electro-static discharge on these things. That small of a track is going to be real easy to fry.
just to point out that the legal complications which surrounded previous versions of the same technology (N-P-17 and the N-P-13 Professional) are now cleared up. These versions had fallen foul of New York State and other local regulations; however, these matters have been settled (my firm's regulatory practice was involved), and N-P NoW19 is cleared by all appropriate agencies (I'm not sure about Utah; check your own lawyer, as ever). Particularly, the TPM version is free of all possible complications.
/. has thousands of readers.
I realise that not one reader in a thousand will care about or understand this thread, but what the hell,
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Mmm, quantum mechanics isn't guaranteed to keep us from continuing to shrink circuitry. For one thing, quantum mechanics is probabilistic. It's unpredictable in that you can't know what, say, one particle is exactly going to do, but you can know the statistics well enough to know what thousands of particles will do.
The problems is that current circuitry is not designed with quantum mechanical effects in mind. You need something like the quantum mechanical transistor that a lot of people are working on, including a research team at Sandia National Labs -- devices which are designed with QM effects in mind, and are optimized to take advantage of those effects.
Sargent
Regulation and the ethical considerations in the computer law and biotechnology demonstrate the problems that can occur with revolutionary new technology which contain new concepts. The window of this opportunity may soon be too late as every day passes. New companies are being incorporated that focus exclusively on nanotechnology and revolutionary advances in this area are likely to occur at any given moment. These advances, once they begin occurring, will likely accelerate much faster than past technologies and lead into what is known as the "Nanotechnology Revolution."
Although the prophetic vision of Drexler's coming era of nanotechnology was published over fifteen years ago, although the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Smalley a few years ago for his nanotechnological achievement, although the brilliant minds such as Ralph Merkle at Xerox PARC and now Xyvex Corp. have been long working hard at designing atomic manipulators, although leading scientists in the field, such as Robert Freitas have authored volumes of texts on the applications of nanotechnology to medicine, although all these achievements and many others have been occurring for over a decade, there has only been one legal article devoted to the subject and it was published over five years ago.1
As a matter of fact, the term "nanotechnology" only appears in thirteen articles in all the published legal scholarly materials and law reviews in the United States. Thus, despite the improved foresight and opportunity of prospective change and all the legal discussion of biotechnology and cloning, discussion of nanotechnology in the legal arena is almost nonexistent at a point in time that is dangerously close to revolutionary nanotechnological developments. Although the legal field and scientific fields are akin to night and day, integration and understanding between the two fields are crucial and discussion of the legal implications of nanotechnology is necessary immediately for properly developed and educated regulation. One particular area of nanotechnology that necessitates prospective regulation is a particularly interesting class of nanotechnology termed "replicating nanotechnology."
This is perhaps one of the more important classes of technology in all of man's technological development. Although nanotechnology will change our all our lives as we know them, it does not necessarily follow that changes in the law are that revolutionary. It might require only slight modification and perhaps the law is already present and we simply need to readjust it accordingly. As Amelia Boss, is a law professor at Temple University School of Law and a member of the Permanent Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC"),2 has stated in our discussions about the legal implications of nanotechnology: "It is always easiest to say Ithis is new technology; we need new law.' The harder, and more interesting challenge, is to demonstrate how the new technology simply repackages old problems, and how concepts that have developed over the centuries really do work when applied to new situations." Professor Boss's assertion could be true, at least in theory, however, nanotechnology will likely necessitate a revolution in legal adaption.
Nanotechnology law will be unlike biotechnology law, computer law or any other type of revolutionary technology. One will not be able to simply take in account all existing law and analyze where in the current body of existing law changes or additions will occur with nanotechnology. Initially, this will be possible and inevitable, but Nanotechnology will replace all manufacturing processes for all present goods, not only producing them at a higher rate, but goods and technology that will be able to respond to an almost infinite amount of properties or tasks that are logistically possible. When it begins to be applied to every aspect of our lives, it will affect every component of our lives and law. Computers are a range of products. The automobile is a range of products. The assembly line was applicable to a range of products. Fire is even applicable to a range of uses. However, nanotechnology will be applicable to almost all processes, even biological. The law will not be able to respond in a similar manner as it has in the past. Before analyzing replicating nanotechnology, it is important to understand the replicating aspect in isolation before for evaluating the nanotechnological aspect and to distance the distraction of the implications of this newly emerging nanotechnology, which, although it is becoming more and more advanced, the lay person still knows very little about it. The replicating aspect can be first applied in discussing the implications to replicating micro or macrotechnology. This case study approach is irrelevant to analyzing replicating nanotechnology, because they are likely to be developed in conjunction with one another, however, it provides an excellent basis for a mental exercise in understanding the sometimes unfathomable impact of not only nanotechnology, but self-replicating nanotechnology.