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Nanoscale Crystals May Be The Future of Silicon
Wire Tap writes: "With all the talk about how silicon is nearing its physical limits in computer systems, and other data processing applications, I found this article quite interesting. "[Brian] Korgel and chemical engineering professor Keith Johnston have found a method to make stable microscopic nanocrystals out of silicon that can emit light. And by toying with the size of the silicon nanostructures, they can change the color of the light that shines through. It can make essentially faster memory and generate less heat and radiate less power.""
You make a great few points... except they're all wrong. Allow me to prevent the flamebait mod that's coming down the pike...
.13 micron scale. Does that mean today we can't do it and it's not commercially viable??? Somehow I think not...
1) Five years ago we had no method of slapping transistors on a chip on the
2) The "fab" community (at least the ones who aren't into a certain British rawk group) will do whatever they damn well have to in order to produce what the market wants. They'll piss upwind in January while licking a metal signpost if it'll make them millions (billions?) in profit.
3)When is new technology every not "decades behind" current technology??? current technology is current cuz it was started a decade ago. Cost comes down over time (which is why my Apple IIGS won't sell for the thousand that was paid for it), as cheaper means of production are discovered.
Next time consider that perhaps the tech we have today isn't the pinnacle of existance and we might (believe it or not) be able to improve on it. It's going to take cash flow, a few wrong turns, and lots of people pissing on the parade, but it will happen.
Give a man fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life!
Obviously, the semiconductor industry is especially interested in this are. IBM has done some work on "streching" the silicon domains in semiconductor devices to get them to behave differently. By doing this, they can get around some of the size limits that chip/device fabrication is currently running up against. I wish I could find the article I saw on this, but I think it was about a month ago.. What strikes me as really neat about this technology is the possibility for optical computing, rather than electron transport through semiconductors. With chemical and nanoscale design applied together, one could perhaps get different materials to emit different wavelenghts of light, opening up not just optical storage applications, but optical CPUs, memory, etc. I want to say that researchers have found some silicon/germanium crystals that do just this, based on the ratio of silicon to germanium. I think I read it in Science or Applied Physics Letters, but again, I'm not completely sure where I read this, but I know I've seen it somewhere. As a nitpicking aside, there is no such thing as microscopic nanocrystals. Nanocrystals are called such because one or more of their dimensions are on the nanoscale. For nanocrystalline silicon, all of its dimensions are nanoscale, and not microscale.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
There was a very big interest in putting Cadmium sulfide inside zeolites. But it's not all that simple to get the crystals in place, and plugging the holes with sulfur is a big problem. Also, IF this works, no one knows how to incorporate these devices into something useful.
Actually, Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors AND CPUs have been made - the older Cray Supercomputers at the NSA are nothing but GaAs computer architechure. The biggest problem with these devices was the heat output. To cool these systems, Cray had to put a recirculating ethylene glycol system into the computer, which ran the ethylene glycol OVER the computer chips and circuit boards to cool them. Since ethylene glycol is an electrical insulator there was no worry about short circuit with this system, provided it was kept absolutely dry. Filters were put into the recirculating unit to ensure dryness. It was such a neat visual effect, that Cray put in windows on the side of the casing so you could see the liquid cascade over the chips and boards and fall over the edge like a waterfall.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
"Rudolph... You're FIRED!"
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Wouldn't those be uncomfortable, considering how much harder silicon is than the silicone traditionally used in non-saline breast implants?
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
-The Professor, Futurama
Perhaps computers built with these new crystals will be fast enough to resist the onslaught of Slashdot. I wouldn't really know since I can't read the article.
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Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
5 words:
Light emitting silicon breast implants.
Brings a whole new meaning the "check out the headlights on that one."
Sacred mother of god, we're about to give you boys another reason to stare at a woman's chest while talking to her.
--Kara
Before you ask, I already have a boyfriend and he's more of a man than you'll ever be.
Not to be a total wanker on the parade but this is money down the drain. Why?
1. Becuase this technology has (currently) no way of being controlled to a point of being put in circuit. To put these crystals in a chip they have to be formed basically on the chip via some lithography method. So until technology devlops a way to put these cyrstals in a specific place this is all a bunch of cool but useless. 2.
2. "Researchers heat a mix of an organic solvent called hexane and a hydrocarbon ligand known as octanol to 450 degrees Celsius inside a titanium chamber." Yeah, this is gonna go over great in the fab community. Now we have to redesign our lithgoraphy to take place indide a titanium chamber at 450 C.
3. Price to performace. A lot of people make claims about new technology but when it comes down to it the reason we have our current tech is becuase its cheap(Comparitively) to put 20 million tranistors on a chip. This new techonolgy is several decades behind and probably will cost A LOT more. There are a lot of techonolgies better than Si transitors but the reason we use it is beacuse in the end comapnies sell a product, not get Tenure at a university. Technology breakthroughs from universities are exteremly importatnt but when they go off claiming to revolutionize commercial industry they are only fluffing there own feathers. Wait until a real company starts inversting in it and not some sucker venture capitalist.
Cthulhu for president!
This process doesn't seem new to me, because it looks surprisingly like the one a French group has invented a few years back. (Do a search for Fievet, and Polyol process). I think Fievet even has some patents on the synthesis procedure.
There are actually many physical methods to make nanocrystals of inorganic materials: ball milling, synthesis in a cavitation field, spray pyrolysis. There are also many other (wet) chemical techniques, of which this is one: water/oil microemulsions, polymer solutions.
The problem with the physical methods is the particle agglomeration, as was indicated in the article. However, the chemical synthesis methods also have problems, since you're stuck with a templating agent that surrounds your nanocrystals. This may be hindering any practical use of the nanocrystals... But you can't burn off the templating agent, because then the particles will agglomerate again.
When talking about light memories and light computers etc. we must face the fact that one basic light component is missing:
The Light Transistor
We can store light (the light flipflop), we can transport light effictivly, overlay it and all that, but we've no light controlled light amplifier.
Currently we've to take the way around through electricity. Receive the light, transform it to an electrical signal, amplify the signal electrically and retransform the signal to light. This way we loose all the benefits light would have.
Until we find a way to amplify light, directly controlled by light there will be no light computers, and light memories will stay in labratory only.
If one day someone would discover in example some crystal that if shined upon from the side, will change it's up/down transperncy then nothing will stop the light computer, without that all other light components are for funny experiments only.
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Why stop there? Imagine a bucket of "display paint" that you could apply to an entire room (walls and ceiling), and then connect to some kind of output device that would let you configure the output parameters.
Please note, though, that this has nothing to do with making faster Si-based MOSFETs (i.e. smaller transistors). If you're interested in that, look here, here (great story), or here to see just a handful of the ideas people have. With all of these things in development, don't expect anything to overtake Si as the dominant technology for a long, long time (~10 years, maybe even). ;-)
My company (which shall remain unnamed) has been working on this technology for processing and routing applications. It isn't intended to replace LCD displays, but to replace traditional silicon processors.
Light processors have been in the planning and development stages for years now, and once the technology is perfected, will offer lower power consumption and less heat production as opposed to the standard silicon-on-insulator microprocessors that are in use today. The light emitting properties of these chips could also be used in optical routers and fiber switching/repeating applications, however we have yet to overcome the problem of interfacing the dylithium crystal matrix with the carbon nanotube fibres used in high speed optical cable. Hopefully the new flux capacitors in development at IBM's "Deep Space Nine" research facility in Oregon will solve this problem nicely, but it looks like these advancements are still several years off.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.