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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"
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)?
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.
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.
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
True. God did invent this - and it appears that IBM's closing the gap. A giant tower of technology reaching for the heavens with IBM at the peak. It's only a matter of time before programmers around the world are struck down with a curse of multiple languages and different protocols so that they will no longer be able to communi....aw crap.
Last post!
So now there will be an "Organic" aisle at Fry's, with pretty green labels and much higher prices?
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
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!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
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.
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