Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lucent's New Chip Is Just One Molecule Thick

Posted by timothy on from the thinner-than-ally dept.

lotusFlow writes: "According to this NYTimes article, Lucent has developed a chip with a layer of transistors that is one molecule thick. This development is considered a new tep above nanotech because "here you direct the molecules with self-assembly to go where you want them to go." Commercial applications of this technology are years in the making, of course."

8 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Nice work and all,... by nickgrieve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "It shows what can be the ultimate limit for transistors," Dr. Schön said. The technology is years away from commercial applications.

    Nice work and all, but just looks like more "In five to ten years" tech to me... Speaking of which, what are we using now that was 5 to 10 years away in 199x?

    --

    1. Re:Nice work and all,... by Magnusite · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, off the top of my head, I can think of:

      1) Giant Magneto-resistive drive heads, which IBM had been working on and claimed to be right around the corner
      2) Silicon-on-Insulator manufacturing technology for integrated circuits. Another research project in 199x
      3) Copper Interconnects for Integrated Circuits - also big research in 199x
      4) Recordable CD's. This was also being researched in 199x
      5) A LOT of problems have been overcome in GA (Gallium Arsenide) circuits manufacturability. This is especially good news for the communications industry.
      6) DSL and Cable Modems - just research projects only five years ago
      7) DVD - that's right, didn't exist in 1995, just a twinkle in the eye of a few companies.

      I have probably forgotten quite a few, but this is not too bad a list.
      Now, don't even get me *started* on the tech we use today that didn't exist in 198x!

  2. one "molecule"? by motherfuckin_spork · · Score: 5, Interesting
    you do realize that there are some freakin' huge-ass molecules out there. this isn't one "atom"... it says one molecule... big, big difference.

    --
    Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
  3. How many molecules in a micron? by stonecoldt · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "The layer of carbon-based molecules is less than one ten-millionth of an inch thick, far thinner than the equivalent structure in current silicon transistors."

    What's this "far thinner" and "less than one ten-millionth" nonsense? Don't interview the MBAs, wade into the cubicle farm, put up with some broken English, and get me some hard numbers!

    Here's my math: One ten millionth of an inch is 0.00254 microns. (2.54 millimicrons? :-) ) Is this number comparable to current 0.18 and 0.13 manufacturing processes? Does this mean the practical limit is about 3 or 4 billion transistors? (100x the athlon.)

    Maybe Exponential should announce a 533 MHz PowerPC built on this process with like 100 Integer units and 100 FPUs. :-)

  4. Re:quantum effects? by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The point is moot. The chip is only being shrunk in one dimension. Any "quantum effects" are going to be confined to that dimension. The other two are independent.
    The real problems are mesoscopic effects, because atoms are "sticky" and objects made of 10-1000 of them do weird things. They aren't as easy to manipulate as the macroscopic objects that we have real-world experience with.

  5. Re:quantum effects? by caffeinated_bunsen · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Quantum effects happen over distances that are significantly smaller than the 'diameter' of an electron, a couple orders of magnitude smaller than an atom, much less a 60+ molecule buckytube.

    #include <IAAP.h>

    Erm, no. There's really no set limit to the distances over which quantum mechanical behavior can be observed, though it's most often restricted to sub-molecular scales. Quantum mechanics is required to describe pretty much any behavior of single electrons accurately. The 'size' of an atom is determined by the uncertainty in position of its bound electrons. Molecular bonding is a quantum phenomenon. Carbon buckytubes exhibit superconductivity precisely because quantum effects manifest themselves over distances several times the interatomic separation. Bose-Einstein condensates form when all the particles of a piece of matter fall into the same quantum state (i.e. they differ only by position). Still, quantum effects are usually only seen in molecular and smaller scale systems.

    As for molecular computing, the molecules in question are mid-sized organic molecules, 2 benzene-type rings with a sulfur atom at each end (according to the diagram in the earlier article). These are large enough that one doesn't have to worry much about each interacting with the next, except at absurdly low temperatures. Even so, each transistor is composed of many molecules in parallel, and the distance scale of the transistor as a whole is much too large to worry about quantum interactions between transistors screwing up your calculations.

    --

    Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
  6. Relative thickness... by Jarvo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just one molecule thick?

    What size molecule are they talking about? Water? Long-chain hydrocarbons?

  7. what are we using now that was 5 to 10 years away? by ColaMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hmm... how about One Point Five Gigahertz processors?
    Seventy Gigabyte drives?

    Christ , I saw a ONE GIGABYTE SDRAM MODULE the other day! I just about peed my pants!

    Beats the hell outta my p-90 with 8MB ram and 1GB drive I bought in early '95. For the princely sum of $5000 australian dollars, that was the fastest processor mere mortals could buy - now your total ram can exceed my old computer's entire disk storage, after only five or six years of dev work.

    Just don't be so impatient - we've come a long way so far.

    --

    You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
    There is a lot of hype here.