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Molecule Sized Transistors
IceFoot writes "Bell Labs announced it has created organic transistors with a single-molecule channel length, more than a factor of ten smaller than anything that has been demonstrated even with the most advanced lithography techniques. The really cool part is the transistors assemble themselves: the molecules do the work of finding the electrodes and attaching themselves. Webcast on Wednesday, October 17, 2001 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time"
God created these when he invented viruses.
Slash Doter
(Back from hiatus!)
Now for step 2: Can we do this and make it cost-efficient?
And Step 3: Can we make new things with this that we couldn't before, or will this just help us shrink down current things?
And Step 4: How can this make us more money (only the salespeople worry about this one)?
And don't forget Step 5: How can this get us laid (only the engineers typically worry about that one)?
I should never have let the PR people make me put this silly molecule model together with superglue ....
So how do we get smaller than this? Smaller molecules? Atoms? Sub-atomic particles? Photons?
It just seems like there is a finite limit to how small we can make these things, and it looks like we're approaching that limit, so where to next? Get rid of transistors all together and use a different method? Optical matricies that perform switching functions? Who knows, but I know I'm excited to find out what happens next.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
where it said that this discovery would be a historical "bookend" in the transistor world.
I wonder if this will prove to be true, or if, like so many feats of miniaturization, be proven incorrect further down the line.
And God said, "Let there be Windows"
And behold, the earth was without form and void,
save a giant blue glow upon the heavens.
What is the transconductance? The maximum switching speed? The gain/bandwidth product? In short, where are all the specs on this transistor that a real engineer would need to evaluate it?
.1 Planck length, if the thing only has gain below 1 Hz it won't be very useful.
I don't care if you can make a transistor with a gate length of
Until Bell releases some more data on how this device can perform, don't get too excited....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Finally, a silver lining behind the huge cloud that is the ownership of Lucent stock...
However, the thing that they do not mention in the announcement is that Bell Labs continues to have problems with the chemical bonds between molecules decaying quickly on these transistors. It is similar to the problems that plague engineers of DNA processors, another cutting-edge-but-hopelessly-broken technology. In fact, despite all of these new achievements that promise to revolutionize the industry, silicon is still king and will be king for many years to come.
-CT
The really cool part is the transistors assemble themselves: the molecules do the work of finding the electrodes and attaching themselves
Great, now even my transistor will find a significant other before I do.
nope - self assembling molecules .... it's one of the areas where the nano-tech people have been working for a while - some molecules will sidle up and stand next to a similar one they happen to run into, pretty soon you have a sheet of them (assuming you have a nice substrate) ....
With single molecule transistors, wouldn't there be reliability concerns? After all, the uncertainty principle could wreak havoc on a circuit that is too small. Both information processing and durability would be hampered.
BlackGriffen
It biodegrades within 6 months forcing an upgrade :D
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
So now there will be an "Organic" aisle at Fry's, with pretty green labels and much higher prices?
sulli
RTFJ.
Ok, I can definately see how this is cool, both in terms of miniaturization and the number of transistors that can fit into large spaces (Such as big-assed Pentium IV CPUs.).
What I want to know is; how does power consumption scale in regards to transistor miniaturization? If I can make a chip require ten times less space, how much less power will it need? If size and power scale ~equally, how does this mean that Dragonball CPUs will soon be crammed into watches?
While the work done at Bell labs does indeed look unique, this experiment and breakthrough has technically already been done by Prof. James Tour (at Rice University) and Prof. Mark Reid of Yale who, in a very high-tech experiment, showed that a single molecule can conduct. It was similar to the structure shown in the Bell labs work, except it was one benzene rather than two. Tour and Reid also used self-assembly to get the molecules to line up to check conductance. The work was published in Science in late 1999.
Further, Tour and his group have synthesized molecular transistors (he calls them "Moleisters") about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, I can't bring up his web pages to find the reference to the papers.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
I wonder what the shape of the turn-on curve is like?
Modern short-channel MOSFETs are an ungainly compromise between being on and off. We can manipulate the threshold voltage, but so far we can't change the shape of the turn-on (essentially the gain) curve very well. The practical upshot is that modern transistors are perched somewhere between leaking too much DC current and not being strong enough to drive signals with the strength we need.
At the moment, there is no such thing as low-power, high-performance deep submicron logic. It's the nature of the transistor, not the clock speed.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I'm sure there will always be room for more.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Mind you, I'm no mathemitician, but the limiting factor that has created the science of binary logic (which shouldn't be confused with pure Boolean logic) is the fact that transistors operate in two states when used as logic gates. On or Off. 1 or 0. Powers of 2 are so important to computer people because that's the way our machines think.
It's going to be much easier to build a decimal or hexidecial adder/math device with optical components since light can be controlled more precisely than electricity. This is, assuming of course, that the process can be carried out on a truly optical chip. Currently the only benefit to optical technology when used inside a logic system is speed of transmission.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Do not worry about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Self-assembling layers that are one-molecule thick are really common and very stable. Examples include cell walls (I know where several trillion are), soap bubbles, etc.
Thermal fluctuations have many orders of magnitude more energy (1/40 kT, where k is Boltzmann's constant) than the quantum mechanical fluctuations associated with the uncertainty principle. Since room temperature doesn't make these things fall apart we can immediately stop worrying about quantum fluctuations. Also, 1 nm is big enough that quantum tunneling of electrons isn't a problem, especially at 5 V (or whatever they use in chips). The scanning tunneling microscope uses gaps that are ten times smaller and voltage differences that are thousands of times larger.
One of these days/I'm going to cut you into little pieces.
The good news:
Bell Labs scientists Zhenan Bao and Hendrik Schon have fabricated molecular-scale organic transistors.
The bad news:
As you can see in the picture, they are REALLY BIG molecules!
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OK, this sounds good but I think that there is one problem: with my luck my chip would be defective. And then I wouldn't be able to return it because it had a "genetic defect" and I'm not allowed to "discriminate" on that basis. Of course, with organic chips the term "virus" will take on a whole new meaning.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
To a surgical center near you.
Molecule sized cell phones implanted while you wait!
GPS tracking implanted while you wait!
PS9 seems to be closer than you think!
But really. This is a great advance. It could lead to pacemakers or other medical equipment less likely to be rejected by the body and also last longer.Very good news indeed.
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Ahem..
There is nothing wrong with that woman. For all you know she could run linux on her desktop, smb share her mp3s, and kick ass in counterstrike.
-
I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks. - Steve Martin
I'm in love! .. at least her invention will help me run my 'how the hell do lush/pothead programmer/musicians meet hot molecular physicists' algorithm. (Yeah, it sucks, UD turned down my application to turn the problem into a UD Job ... )
"Old man yells at systemd"
molecular-scale transistors that rival conventional silicon transistors in performance
And rival here means what? Slower, but will become faster; Slower, but less power? Aren't we aiming for superior in all facets, not just size?
factor of ten smaller...
A Million Times Smaller Than a Grain of Sand
In what dimensions? Width, Area, Volume? What are the actual dimensions, and not just the molecule switch, but the whole gate arrangement?
A good switch perhaps, but it looks as though it is still hooked up to conventional circuitry, unless I'm reading there diagram incorrectly. This isn't so much nano-technology, as a nano-coating on existing technology. Self assembly doesn't impress me in a coating.
Self-assemble the paths in and out of the circuit and then we'll talk.
Letter To Iran
Really, when are these things ever going to be put to use. IMHO, there are two major issues that will prevent these being used in any kind of circuitboard. First, the issue of crosstalk. At the molecular level, especially with the "self-assemblage," there's no way that major crosstalk could be avoided. Secondly, what happens when one of these things breaks down? Obviously it's not going to be easy to fix, and the whole circuit board would need replacing. Don't get me wrong, this is quite cool, but it's always good to keep one foot on the ground when you're reaching for the sky.
My other sig is funny!
Uh, not quite. Single electrons have half-integer spin and thus obey the pauli exclusion principle, while photons (spin zero) obey bose-einstein statistics. This makes electrons "avoid" each other while photons "congrigate" (condense). But both may be viewed as either waves or as particles, and the WP duality per se has no effect on their behaviour.
-- MarkusQ
To paraphrase Harlan Ellison, I have no mod points, and I must laugh.
-- MarkusQ
Scientist: Looky here, isn't this cool!
Lucent Exec: That's nice, but how will this help me sell more telephone systems?
Scientist: AAAAARGH! I feel like dilbert you PHB! I'm going to work for IBM research! At least their innovations eventually turn into products!
Lucent Exec: Good ridance! You can join those damn Unix guys. I'm going to play golf....