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UK Scientists Make Transistor One Atom Long, 10 Atoms Wide
Bibek Paudel points out a story about the latest step forward in the development of nano-scale circuits. Researchers from the University of Manchester have created some of the smallest transistors ever, measuring only one atom by 10 atoms. The transistors are made out of graphene, which has the potential to replace silicon in the never-ending hunt for smaller computer technology. From NewScientist:
"There are other kinds of prototype transistors in this size range. But they usually need supercooling using liquid gas, says Novoselov. The new graphene devices work at room temperature. Such prototypes are typically made by building one atom at a time, or wiring up individual molecules. Those approaches are complex and impractical, Novoselov says. By contrast, the graphene transistors were made in the same way that silicon devices are, by etching them out of larger pieces of material. 'That's their big advantage,' he says."
One question...
How do you know it's one atom long and ten wide? maybe it's ten atoms long and one wide?
Shouldn't that be 10 Atoms long, One Atom wide?
Summation 2
That's one atom thick, not one atom wide.
I submitted this in story form yesterday but also in recent news, Glasgow scientists have made a tiny switch that would make huge leaps in memory storage:
Scientists at the University of Galsgow have claimed a breakthrough that enables them to store 500,000 gigabytes squeezed onto one square inch making way for some hilarious storage for things like cell phones and iPods. The scientists working on it divulged, "We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device. This is unprecedented and provides a route to produce new a molecule-based switch that can be easily manipulated using an electric field. By taking these nano-scale clusters, just a nanometer in size, and placing them onto a gold or carbon, we can control the switching ability. Not only is this a new type of switchable molecule, but by grafting the molecule on to metal (gold) or carbon means that we can potentially bridge the gap between traditional semiconductor devices and components for nanoscale plastic electronics. The key advantage of the molecule sized switch is information / transistor density in traditional semi-conductors. Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits per square inch. This breakthrough shows conceptually that this is possible (showing the bulk effect) but we are yet to solve the fabrication and addressing problems. The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically. Since these switches are little balls of metal oxide they are made of similar stuff to normal semi-conductors but are much easier to manipulate as discrete molecular units." You can read more about it in Nature's Nanotechnology publication. In related news, researchers have claimed to harness terahertz radiation using circuits.
Another advancement in nanotechnology, thought I would post it here since it's probably not going to be used.
My work here is dung.
"which has the potential to replace silicon". Talk is cheap. Show me the stuff. Seriously, that phrase has been around for decades...
Seriously, sometimes I feel the line between science and magic gets fuzzy. A transistor one atom by 10 atoms? That's on such a small scale that is so hard to comprehend that it'd almost be easier to hand-wave it and just say "it's magic."
Pah! I discovered Miniaturization two years ago in Civilization II.
A quick search said nothing about power consumption. If these transistors are really small, but leaky as hell with subthreshold leakage then what's the point? The chip might have to manage heat/power in such a way that there's a large portion of the die dedicated to it.
Also, what "atom" size are we talking about here?
I applaud the attempt at a car analogy, but the hurdles to a practical electric car extend way beyond technology and even economics - it's almost all politics.
=Smidge=
So... is a liquid gas anything like a solid liquid? Or perhaps a case of flatulence gone wrong?
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they're not.
eh. for whatever reason, it won't catch on.
Of course, this being the UK, we'll give the technology away or sell the company that owns it to an overseas one for 50p.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Which leads one to think... what kind of politics would be involved to prevent this transistor technology from becoming affordable?
Patents, perhaps?
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
* temperatures above absolute zero that are economically achievable.
This technology (and other similar developments using graphene/carbon) seems very promising. And I'm glad they could solve one part of the fabrication process using steps that are already in use (etching).
However, there remains another issue when using these devices to construct circuits: patterning. Right now, that's generally done with lithography, and though several ideas are being worked on, we simply cannot yet use lithography to pattern devices anywhere near this small.
Don't get me wrong: it's good that such technology is out there waiting for us once the patterning tech catches up. But until that happens, this stuff will likely remain in the lab.
Kythe
Not only did they etch this out of a larger piece of material, but even the larger piece of material was too small to see with the naked eye.
Of course, someday they'll find a material where a single atom is, like, an inch wide, and then we won't be impressed by atoms anymore...
At this scale, the transistor could very easily be destroyed by a cosmic ray. Interesting experiment, but I have a hard time believing that this development can find many practical applications.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Orientation is a relative concept. I used to work in shipping. When you do have to orient for some reason, the longest side is always the length, followed by width and height in decreasing distance. Oh, and technically it is on the periodic table of elements. You're just looking in the wrong place. Graphene's just carbon graphite.
If you want something to worry about, worry about power usage and heat dissapation.
Car Analogy:
Say a car A is 10 feet bumper to bumper, and 6 feet side to side. We say that car A is 10 feet long and 6 feet wide.
Now say car B is only 3 feet bumper to bumper (Steve Urkel's car?) and 6 feet wide. Would you say this car is 6 feet "long" just because its width happens to be the longest dimension? IMO, we would call this car "3 feet long and 6 feet wide."
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
Uh, no, the challenges to a *feasible* electric car are mostly technological. And no, boil-the-ocean schemes along the lines of "if only the government will mandate electric refill stations along the freeway" are not a political barrier, except in the minds of some activists. Any solution that requires massive up-front investments is a poor engineering solution.
The real problem with an electric car is that *storing* electricity is a hard problem. And unless your electric car runs on rails, you will need to store electricity.
Incidentally, cars aren't the only ones with this problems -- laptops and mobile phones have exactly the same problem.
Now, recent advances in nanotech will help batteries improve, and we may even see practical capacitor-type storage devices. And when we get to that point, the electric car will be a reality.
Go somewhere random
They're in the UK, so I believe the proper term for them is "boffins".
Last time I checked, the internal temperature of my processors were at least twice as high as room temperature.
So graphene is the future of computers? Maybe we can sequester all our carbon that way!
A-Bomb
call me when they make one that's 1x4x9.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
damn my lack of mod points.
That is precisely what is wrong with the electric car. we have regenerative braking but we don't get the real benefit of it as batteries can't absorb the charge fast enough. We need to move beyond chemical storage for electricity. Once we have ultra Capacitors Solar cells, and Wind turbines can be more wildly used. As the energy can be stored.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Now if they can scale it up to a factor of a few billion/trillion, and mass produce it, they'll replace silicon.... *Holds breath* . .. ... *THUD!*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Tell me, if you saw an animal (say horse or even pig) sprout wings and fly would you think it was magic?
You you immediately conclude that there is a mystical force outside your ability to comprehend that made that animal grow wings?
Or would you conclude that the animal was genetically engineered or that it was actually a robot of some sort or even that you imagined it?
My point is simply this, the idea that advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic ONLY applies to pre-industrial/technological societies.
This is a little sad, like losing some innocence but I suppose that is the price of society growing up...I can only hope that we are in the early-mid teen years right now and that we will "grow out" of this phase.
I dropped it on the carpet.
That's a pretty poor excuse - if you just comment/document the software properly then it would be fine. A little extra time taken writing the program isn't much of a price to pay for the hours and hours of processor time and RAM/HD space saved by people using the application either..
:P hehe
Any software that needs to access the hard disk just to move the mouse (after loading the driver of course) is doomed anyway, no matter how easy it is to maintain
which is totally what she said
I cannot imagine an application that a single mini transistor is required, where a big one can't do the trick. Will kids have transistor radios dropped into their ears?
Do you even know what a Beowulf cluster is?
which is totally what she said
Not the autobot kind either. There are currently a kind of step up transformer in many cars now. Ever use/see a 110 volt outlet/power point in a car? That is a converter from 12V CD to 110V AC. Why can't there be a step up up DC transformer? A little DC current goes in and a lot more comes out the other side which characters the main batteries. This exists on land for AC, granted the size is huge, but first make a working model, then shrink it to a more portable size.
I suppose it all depends on what your definition of "feasible" is. How far do you drive in a single day? Depending on who you talk to, the average American commutes to and from work for an average distance of about 35 miles. An electric car with a 100 mile range between charges is far from infeasible. In fact, it was done but the project was scrapped under somewhat suspicious circumstances.
Something that gets you to and from the store and wherever you work is my definition of practical, and that level of performance is clearly attainable for what some studies suggest are the average usage conditions in this country. So what's the problem here?
=Smidge=
Link in parent is malicious. Do not click.
Of course there's nothing to see! It's 1 x 10 atoms, you can't see that with your bare eyes!
The first Mars colony ship, a joint effort between the US and the UK space agencies, crashed into the sun last week. Investigators have concluded that the navigation system failed due a unit conversion error between US and UK computer component manufacturing. The US manufactured their components with transistors that were 10 atoms long and one atom wide, while the Europeans components used one atom long and 10 atoms wide transistors.
Next thing you know we're going to be needing small atoms to keep Moore's Law humming along.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
well, for the cases where performance matters (games, 3D rendering, CAD, simulation, etc), all it would take in that case is for one company to spend the extra money, and they will reap the benefits in better sales. Then the others would have no choice but to follow suit. Hopefully those type of companies actually do put some thought into performance of their code anyway.
Having said that, I do agree that it's good to try and keep the purpose of code as clear as possible through sensible variable names and constructs, and a good compiler should be capable of optimising a lot of code anyway, but it's no excuse for just being lazy and using more resources than you actually need..
which is totally what she said
while I'm being modded 'overrated' even though I hadn't been rated yet, I'd like to point out that it's spelled peregrine and not peragrin. Thankyou.
which is totally what she said
thanks for the laugh, and yes you are right it is peregrine, but peregrine is taken in most locations on the web so for consistency I use peragrin.
The google trail for peragrin leads to numerous forums where i visit.
I do have a question though, if wind turbines start chopping off heads, will the mobs suddenly turn to green energy?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Nanotech is great stuff. The further we advance in nano-tech is better the chanses we don't mess up the timeline because we can go back in time acedently drop our future PDA's and the technology is so small there is no chance in hell that people would be able to figure out the tech and make their own. Thus saving the timeline. Timetravelers rejoice, long are the days of the spinning wheel bicicle.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Aye, I wasn't sure if it was just a typo or misheard phrase :p
I'm guessing the mobs will only turn to green energy when the government legalises marijuana and electric VW camper vans.
which is totally what she said
Note - I am not a car fanatic. I like cars that take me from A to B reliably, and with decent handling. The problem is, I bought a car so that I'd not have to worry about the distance between A and B.
For work, I drive about 20 minutes - less than 20 miles. But the thing is, I'd like to use the same car for longer drives. The notion of having a commute-only car and a separate car for everything else is not very appealing to me. As for the EV1, I'd love to see a ROI analysis of the costs of putting up the fuel infrastructure for a car that only urban and suburban Americans could use 4 days a week (because they could be driving out/in on Fridays/Mondays).
That said, you should look at the Tesla -- it's supposed to do 220 miles on a single charge. And if they can get their transmission issues sorted out, it's going to make electric cars not just eco-friendly, but *desirable*.
Go somewhere random
I read somewhere here on slashdot the solution to the problems many have with long distance drives. Essentially it was have your car be electric, but have a space in the trunk or under the hood or even a small trailer that could hold a generator and a small tank of gas. You just plug the generator directly into your engine and when the batteries start to get low on power, the generator kicks on and charges them back up.
I think it's a brilliant idea. Then when you use your car like you usually do (short drives in town) you don't use any gas. And when you need to go further you can do so. In fact, you don't even need to own the generator. Maybe Hertz or Enterprise could rent them out or something. And if you're going on really long trips, you can get a larger generator.
I just like the idea of an electric vehicle because of the decoupling. Sure we use a lot of coal now, but it's easier to clean up the pollutants when they are in one place then when they are being spewed out every 20 feet on the road. Also, energy companies could change their energy source and drivers wouldn't even know or care. They could switch to geothermal, wind, solar, nuclear, fusion, whatever, and drivers wouldn't have to spend a dime on their car for it to happen.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
To get a real feel for it, you need to put it in different terms, namely: How many of these will fit in the Library of Congress?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
That's called a hybrid. Specifically, a series hybrid (Engine->Generator->Motor, opposed to parallel hybrid where the engine can power the wheels directly)
You don't want to just toss a generator into your trunk because they are much less efficient than a purpose built car engine and typically have no pollution controls installed.
=Smidge=
That's certainly a valid point, but I think you are not in the majority with that preference.
And that still doesn't make an all-electric car infeasible.
=Smidge=
It's not anymore a hybrid than an electric car. With an electric car you have a plug that goes into your wall socket and charges its batteries. But what do you do on long trips where you don't want to wait three hours for the batteries to charge? Easy, before you go you rent (or buy) a trailer that is designed specifically to be a generator that you can plug stuff into. The outlet looks just like a wall outlet. It's like bringing the wall with you if you will.
So maybe in the trunk is a bad idea (which I agree with on grounds that if you are going on a long trip, you probably want that trunk space for luggage instead of a generator and 5 gallon tank of gas). So you use the trailer that could have a standard hitch to fit on any car. You buy one or rent it as needed and it will fit your car. Even if they aren't as efficient as a car engine is now, since you are only using it for long trips the reduction in gasoline usage will still be vast.
And since we are putting these on special trailers we can have all the pollution controls built into them. Sure I suppose somebody will just throw a regular generator into a trailer, but if the world went to electric vehicles with gas generators only for long trips, we could handle the small amount of increased pollution from those few who refuse to get the pollution controlled generators.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Graphite's just carbon too. Graphene is just a single sheet (1 atom thick) of graphite, or graphite is a bunch of graphene layers stacked on top of one another.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
That's certainly a valid point, but I think you are not in the majority with that preference.
Sure he is.
How many people do you know that specifically own a commuter car, in addition to a car for "everything else?" Sure, some families can pull this off, but most single people can't afford the second car, unless they're car nuts who can grab a cheap used car and keep it running nice.
Now, think about it: how many people who actually sacrificed cargo/seating room and performance just to cut down their gas budget are going to be commuting ONLY 35 miles both ways? And then, how many of those commutes are going to just use up 35 miles of range? You have to add additional range to account for detours, traffic jams, acts of god, the need to go to the store or pick up the kids on the way home, etc. 100 miles range is not nearly enough for the average commuter to rest easy, when they find themselves stuck in a 2-hour backup, and Johnny calls and needs to be picked-up from school.
And hell yes, traffic jams eat up more power than unhindered traffic, even for an electric vehicle with regenerative braking. Or do you honestly expcet people to TURN OFF the air conditioner in the summer heat, or turn off the heater in the icy depths of winter? Or turn off the wipers in a rainstorm? Or turn off their headlights at night? Or simply turn off the stereo? All of these suck down power on an electric vehicle, and are an utter necessity for a car to be successful in the USA. If you have to turn these on, your range can drop considerably, and this can happen even if the car isn't moving.
It is much less stressful to own an efficient gasoline commuter car that has 3-times the range of the electric vehicle, and can be refueled at any station in 5 minutes. This is why the gasoline-electric hybrid has made inroads in the country, but electric-only has not. Eventually, plug-in hybrids and improvements in storage may pave the way for electric-only vehicles, but that day is not today.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
How many people have a CHOICE to own something other than a gasoline vehicle? Excluding a handful of DIY there are no options.
Incidentally, I know quite a few people who own multiple vehicles. Specifically, a small car for "around the town" type of driving and daily use, and another vehicle for more serious work/recreation (typically something with towing capability and cargo storage, like a minivan or pickup). My anecdote cancels your anecdote, I guess.
35 miles/day is the current national average. That's what it is. That's three days worth of commuting on a single charge using yesterday's battery technology (plain lead-acid). If you're willing to pay for it you can get some nice (patent encumbered) automotive grade NiMH batteries that would nearly double that.
Also, don't forget the fact that an electric car stopped in traffic uses ZERO energy. Unlike a gasoline car which typically keeps the motor running even when not moving, an electric car can sit in traffic practically forever. Even if you add things like A/C and radio, those run off a separate accessory battery and not directly the main motor bank.
Now, is an electric car for everyone? Of course not. But I still think you are selling them way short, since there were literally thousands of people on the waiting list to lease an EV1 for $500/mo despite very limited regional availability.
=Smidge=
And I've built a quantum interface 10 chars long and three wide and can operate in just three dimensions;
I'm currently working on the psychology of GSVs;
I'll need to add a fourth dimension to get volume, but it works.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Isnt the key problem that, you need to get electricity from somewhere, and if you get it from the mains your burning oil anyway?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
These things are a bitch to solder.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's the PICO scale! Looks like nanotechnology has some competition
And you just gave me a great idea: let's try to turn marijuana into fuel! Then we could bitch to our governments about how easy it is to grow and if it was legalized, we wouldn't need oil and there would hardly be any pollution at all AND, the best of all, the drivers will be in a good mood and when accidents would happen, everyone would feel just great about it and drivers wouldn't resist arrests any more.
It really depends. For OSes, people don't care about benchmarks and stuff (though thankfully Vista seems to be being rejected - I really hope it doesn't manage to scrape through to mainstream adoption). But for specific high performance apps, people really do care about the speed and interface, and if one application was twice as fast as the rest, with the same features, reliability and ease of use, the others would basically have to follow suit - admittedly only as long as the faster app was marketed well enough that people knew about it and tried it out.
which is totally what she said