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Light-Producing Nanotubes Could Mean Faster Chips
CannibalBob writes "From PCWorld: Researchers at IBM have used carbon molecules to emit light, a breakthrough that could replace silicon as the foundation of chips and lead to faster computers and telecommunication equipment. This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity. Read the article."
This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity
I always assumed with enough power ANYTHING could emit light.. if only for a brief time
How do light bulbs work? True, they burn as a side effect of being heated, but you apply electricity, and you [eventually] get light. Then there's the the whole laser thing... Florcent tubes?
Wouldn't ignorant jackholes who read too many bad sci-fi novels like Bill Joy worry about these "Nanotubes" going haywire and turning the planet to gray goo? Or would Apple sue them into oblivion for using "Carbon" in a computer without their express permission?
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
>This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity.
Heck, if you put too much lighter fuel on the charcoal and apply your electric grill lighter while standing too close you'll see PLENTY of light from those charcoal molecules!
...and lead to faster computers and telecommunication equipment.
Doesn't it seem like this catch-phrase is tacked onto every new discovery? Couldn't these folks just be making nifty flashlight bulb replacements? Does EVERYTHING need to give us faster computers?
--
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
Was this a troll?
"Researchers at IBM have used carbon molecules to emit light, a breakthrough that could replace silicon as the foundation of chips and lead to faster computers and telecommunication equipment." (emphasis added)
It was also reported a year ago that they had created transistors using nanotubes, although not with light.
Pardon me for being skeptical (I am a theorist, not an experimentalist), but isn't there a revolutionary new 'Carbon Nano-tube Technology' every 2 months? I mean, how many of these technologies will be applicable with thier current specifications?
And not only that, but it seems that nano-tubes are not currently being mass produced in any reasonable way. If they are, why aren't more small graduate materials labratories basing research on them?
I'm not against plausible speculations to applied science, but it just seems that the carbon nano-tube technology is still in its beginning phases, and we won't see these 'small optical fibers' or any other applied devices anytime before 2020.
I'm a complete ignorant about these things. But how stable are these systems that work on nano levels? For instance if I would give my computer a hard kick, would it be affected in any way? The energy levels it works on are so low.
Yeah, then kill you because nanostuff gets through your skin and the light give you malinoma from the inside.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Here's the detailed info on all this:
IBM Research Light Emitting Carbon Nanotube news release
There's also an animation, but the pictures in the release are easier to follow.
JS - IBM Metaverse devteam
The opinions expressed here are mine & not necessarily representative of IBM
If they managed to refine this enough, could we be seeing nanotube displays some time in the future? And how would the power drain compare to that of an LCD or OLED display?
would constitute a single molecule. Applying electricity to it, as pointed out in the article, they were able to produce light (1.5 micron). An LED, tungsten wire, or burning lump of coal are not made up of a single molecule, no more so than an ice cube is a single molecule of water. What this constitutes is an engineering first. What is left to be seen is if they can find useful applications and mass produce it.
End of Line.
Yes. The article doesn't mention much about how light will be recieved (though I suspect it will just happen in the reverse - light will generate electricity), and it also fails to point out that with the immense complexity of today's chips, it wouldn't be just an easy jump to convert existing designs to accept light pathways over silicon. This would require a new industry apart from the semiconductor sector, with new designs following different physics and fabrication techniques. That may be a great thing, but 'years' is most certainly how far away it is right now.
Would it stand to reason that these devices would _generate_ electricity when bombarded by photons? Or would they be destroyed? :)
I'm sure several orders of magnitude more of these nanotubes would fit in the space of a solar cell.
Stephenson's aerostats just might work.
Perhaps someone with a background could answer.
- OrbNobz
I don't care about the answer, the nano-machine operating my fingers is asking.
Yes.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Now, not only can we build nanotube fiber cables to orbit, but we can light them up at night too!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Obviously, you use the light, run back through nanotubes, to turn into electricity. See also: LED's and Solar Panels (which are also essentially diodes) Every $%@ physical process is reversible.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Three days ago
Optical computers have been discovered? Superconducting fibre will soon follow and we will be able to build the dreaded gatling laser!
/discoveries according to Alpha Centauri
After that it is only a matter of time before fusion power is harnessed and our units are twice as strong as the enemies!
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
I'm a graduate physics student (experimentalist), and I'll be working with nanotubes. But we're just building up our lab now (my advisor just arrived here only a few months ago). We'll be doing measurements with carbon nanotubes, initially continuing what we did last summer (at her old postdoc lab) by measuring superconducting nanowires. If you're curious, these nanowires are created by sputtering a superconducting alloy (MoGe) on top of a nanotube substrate. They're interesting because the system dimensions are small enough that the wires are effectively one-dimensional, which means they can't support long-range order and thus cannot allow Cooper-pair supercurrents to flow unimpeded through the wire.
It's hard to create nanotubes, and harder to put them where you want them. One way to create them is to use chemical vapor deposition (CVD), where you basically try to create a controlled environment where some hydrocarbon (eg methane) is ignited (the environment is somewhat oxygen-deficient so CO2 isn't the only carbon species produced) The 'soot' that is subsequently deposited on your substrate should contain nanotubes if the right conditions are met.
To get the tubes in certain places, sometimes little 'seeds' of iron particles are used, in hopes the nanotubes will grow/branch from them. It's hard to create good SWNT (Single-Walled Nanotubes), but easier to form 'ropes' of many nanotubes intertwined together.
Another difficult factor to control is the 'chirality' of the tube. Basically, a carbon nanotube is a rolled graphite sheet, but when the sheet is rolled, it can have certain 'twist' to it. For example, if you rolled lined paper into a cylinder, you can have zero helicity, in which case your lines will form independent circles. Or you can shift the lines by an integer number, in which case the lines will form helices of varying pitch. This factor in nanotubes determines the electronic band structure, which mandates whether the tubes are metallic or semiconducting. It would be highly desirable to be able to produce consistently tubes of the same chirality.
I hope this makes sense, I was up all night doing E&M homework (ya gotta love Jackson), so my brain is kinda fried right now.
make world, not war
Researchers at IBM have used carbon molecules to increase the average female bustline.
Melony Swayback, an IBM test subject states, "These new nanotube implants work great! Now they look perky without even wearing a bra!"
Director of IBM R&D states, "Wow! What CAN'T these things do??"
- My oranges are RIPE!
In your experiment, the graphite glowed because it got hot. It also oxidized because it got hot. It's a simple case of resistive power dissipation.
In this case, the carbon is emitting light through a quantum process, not thermal radiation. The graphite doesn't get hot and therefore doesn't oxidize.
I don't know how facetious you're being, but I'll answer anyway. The carbon atoms in a carbon nanotube are in a highly ordered arrangement (a nanotube is essential a crystal with well-defined point symmetry groups), which means the potential energy (ignoring end-effects of the tube) is invariant under certain symmetry operations, namely translation and rotation. These symmetries will manifest themselves when you solve Schrodinger's equation in some form of electronic band structure, probably as a splitting of their corresponding degenerate states. The resulting bandgap is what is most-likely being exploited to emit the photons.
Contrasted to the human body, in which case the carbon atoms don't have much ordering at all, and chemical reactions are constantly occurring. Hence the band structure would be a chaotic non-equilibrium mess.
make world, not war
Thinking about it, would it not be feasible to make them emit harmonics (375nm blue, anyone?) for use in optical storage too?
I'm just a dumb old maths guy, not a physicist, but surely someone can enlighten us?
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
In theatrical lighting, the power stage is separated from the signal side by an optocoupler--which basically ensures that if the power stage leaks 240VAC, it won't travel down the DMX wire and fry everything else.
I wonder if they could use these "lighted" carbon nanotubes to put an optocoupler directly on the IGBT of the dimmer...that, as my coworkers would say, would be "freakin' awesome"!
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
I'd like to know if these light-emitting nanotubes can be used for nanoprinting of ultra-dense transistor chips. Talk about entering into the next age of computing power ...
-- Dossy
Dossy's Blog
I beg to differ. Silicon has been made to emit light in various ways for over a decade.
"Scientists at Surrey University, led by researcher Kevin Homewood, are showing off a prototype silicon-based light-emitting diode (LED) -- an invention that could be of significance to the whole electronics and communication industry.
"By enabling silicon to emit light, the scientists say they may have found a way to use light to efficiently transfer data around microchips. This could lead to smaller, more powerful computers and improve data communications significantly."
ZDNet UK: Light-emitting silicon boosts chip speeds: 8th March 2001
"The photoluminescence emanating from a regular array of 1.2 m sized dots composed of Si nanocrystals was studied with spatial, spectral and temporal resolution."
New Journal of Physics: Nanostructuration with visible-light-emitting silicon nanocrystals
"GENEVA, Switzerland -- STMicrolectronics claims to have achieved a breakthrough in the creation of light-emitting silicon and said it would have engineering samples of monolithic silicon devices based on the technology, combining electrical isolation and optical communication, before the end of 2002.
"The development allows silicon light emitters to match the efficiency of compound semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide for the first time, the company said."
EE Times: STMicro claims light-emitting silicon breakthrough: October 28, 2002
"The discovery of visible luminescence from porous silicon [1] has stimulated a large interest in this material. Numerous studies have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve efficient visible luminescence from porous silicon layers [2]. This material system has significant economic potential as efficient visible emitters could be fabricated on silicon wafers and incorporated with current microelectronic devices using existing silicon processing technologies."
[1] L. T. Canham. "Silicon quantum wire array fabrication by electrochemical and chemical dissolution of wafers." Appl. Phys.Lett., 1990, 57 1046 - 1048.
[2] For a recent review of the work in porous silicon see : Thin Solid Films, 1995, 225 and "Porous Silicon", edited by Z. Chuan and R Tsu, World Scientific, Singapore, 1995.
A Visible Large Area Light Emitting Diode Fabricated From Porous Silicon Using A Conducting Polyaniline Contact
BTW, technically, photocells are optoelectronic devices, as are LEDs.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Doesn't anyone remember this? Nanotubes seem to catch fire when you take pictures of them with a flash camera. How is putting light inside the tube going to take care of this *small* problem?
why my computer lights up when it is running, doesn't it?