For more info on a specific newsletter, click the title. Details will be displayed in a new window.
Subscribe to
Computerworld 40 years of the most authoritative source of news and information for IT leaders.
Molecular Self-Assembly
or
Other Hardware Stories
|
|
|
|
September 05, 2005 (Computerworld) -- Someday, computer chips will be grown, not made.
The concept of nanotechnology—that is, the manufacture of preposterously small objects—is at least familiar to most, although the scales involved continue to boggle the mind (a pinhead is about 1 million nanometers wide). It's easy to see why such extreme miniaturization interests semiconductor makers: Feeding the beast called Moore's Law grows more difficult with every generation of chips.
A number of companies are betting that the best way to operate in this nanoscale world is via "molecular self-assembly," in which circuits literally grow themselves. IBM, Texas Instruments Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are focusing on incrementally self-assembled components that can be integrated with conventional silicon-based chips. Meanwhile, start-ups such as ZettaCore Inc. and Cambrios Technologies Corp. aim to eliminate silicon completely by building entire semiconductors from molecules.
But, experts caution, the race is not a sprint but a marathon whose finish line is 20 years off at least.
Researchers have already shown that it's possible to integrate self-assembly with conventional semiconductor-manufacturing techniques—meaning chips that are at least partially self-assembled may be found in commercially available computers in five to seven years, says Jack Uldrich, president of The NanoVeritas Group in St. Paul, Minn., and co-author of The Next Big Thing Is Really Small (Crown Business, 2003).
Natural Patterns
Self-assembly—the tendency of certain structures to fall naturally into patterns—is one of nature's most common occurrences. On a grand scale, for example, wind direction, temperature and moisture in the air result in predictable types of storms.
Now think smaller—much smaller. Certain molecules combine without guidance in predictable ways. "Some molecules recognize each other and find natural low-energy states," says W. Grant McGimpsey, a biology professor and director of the Bioengineering Institute at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
A common example—and one that's expected to play a prominent role in chip making—is the SAM, or self-assembling monolayer. When a substrate and molecules with long carbon chains are combined under the right conditions, SAMs self-assemble.
"The neat thing about SAMs is they're very well ordered," McGimpsey says. A field of these SAMs protrudes from the substrate at a well-defined angle—like a small patch of thick, well-tended grass—and can perform several duties, such as improving conductivity or increasing surface area. Such order, McGimpsey says, "means predictability of structure, and thus of properties."
To date, the management of self-assembled molecules that could be applied to semiconductors is limited to a few basic structures. However, researchers believe that's a benefit, not a drawback.
Because of the high cost of tooling up, process change in the semiconductor industry is slow. Thus, self-assembly is sure to make its way into integrated circuits only gradually. Early applications will be simple and unglamorous.
For example, IBM Research has used self-assembly to boost by 400% the performance of the high-capacity decoupling capacitor, an integrated-circuit component that helps maintain a steady, spike-free power supply.
"Self-assembled materials form very simple patterns," explains researcher Chuck Black of IBM Research's Yorktown Heights, N.Y., laboratory, so that structures can be made far smaller than those resulting from lithography, the conventional chip-making technique.
HP has recently spoken with boldness about nanotechnology's role in its future. "We believe we have a practical, comprehensive strategy for moving computing beyond silicon to the world of molecular-scale electronics," Stan Williams, a director at HP Labs, said in a March statement. HP is betting on crossbar arrays—a way to replace traditional transistors with devices created by trapping a switchable layer only a few atoms thick between crossed wires. HP acknowledges that it must answer many questions before manufacturing crossbar circuits, but one possibility is a self-assembly technique in which silicon nanowires would be "grown" between a pair of electrodes.
The concept of a mass-produced structure with dimensions measured in atoms helps explain why researchers are turning to nanotechnology as the next great hope for Moore's Law—the observation, credited to Intel Corp. founder Gordon Moore, that the density of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 to 24 months.
Today's most advanced transistors feature gate lengths of 90nm; Intel says it will roll out 45nm transistors in 2007. That's less than 1/5000 the width of a pinhead—and yet it's an absolute chasm compared with a molecule, which is about 1nm in width.
As a result, McGimpsey points out, the potential to shrink chips is vast: "Replace all the gates on [today's semiconductors] with atoms, and you get a ten-thousandfold decrease in size and thus increase in speed."
One sign that limited applications of self-assembly are likely years rather than decades away from production is the effort that's been made to integrate the technique with conventional lithography. For example, the recent IBM breakthrough that most excites Black is a process improvement making it possible to "register," or align, self-assembled structures with those created through lithography. Conventional chips feature about 30 lithographed layers, and aligning them precisely is one of the prerequisites of production. It's a difficult process that will only get harder as circuits shrink. Thus, IBM's newly developed ability to align self-assembled components "is a big breakthrough," Black says. "This allows us to truly think about building [hybrid chips]."
Uldrich of NanoVeritas says the complexity of manufacturing ever-smaller silicon chips and the billions of dollars invested worldwide in nanotechnology research will hasten the arrival of full-fledged self-assembled chips. "This stuff is coming," Uldrich says, "and it's coming a lot sooner than many people believe."
ATOM-BY-ATOM GROWTH
Northwestern University researchers recently made a breakthrough when they demonstrated the ability to cause nanorods made from gold and polymers to self-assemble into complex shapes, including this sphere.
Image Credit: Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University
Scientists at HP Labs have produced a conductive wire 10 atoms wide by vaporizing erbium onto a silicon surface. Such “grown” wires could become the basis of the crossbar architecture that HP has advocated as an alternative to conventional semiconductor fabrication.
Ulfelder is a freelance writer in Southboro, Mass. Contact him at steve@ulfelder.com.
|
Print this Story |
|
Send Us Feedback |
|
E-mail this Story |
|
Digg this Story |
|
Slashdot this Story |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
All Zones Application Performance Zone Enterprise-Class Security Zone Enterprise Solutions Zone The File Data Management Zone Grid Computing on Windows Zone Security Management Zone ITIL Best Practices Zone The SAS Zone Storage Virtualization Zone The Data Center Management Zone |
 See your link here
|
 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
| ||||||||
|
Download this Computerworld Report, free for a limited time, compliments of HP.
Download this white paper, free, compliments of Citrix. 
Long Tail Supplier Collaboration - What's In It For You? 
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services.
- Mozilla launches Firefox 3.0 RC1 early
- Microsoft: Don't misunderstand UAC, other Vista features
- HP confirms XP SP3 endless reboot snafu, promises patch
- More top stories
Cost Effective Scaling with Virtualization and Coyote Point Systems An overview of the industry trend toward virtualization, how server consolidation has increased the importance of application uptime and the steps being taken to integrate load balancing technology with virtualized servers.
Download this white paper now!
|
 Get Into Gear!Check out our new personal technology section -- TechGear -- for the latest on those cool gadgets that you just gotta have! Host Mike Elgan provides hands-on reviews and analysis of the stuff that makes IT fun. Head to TechGear
|
| Detect, identify, and locate RF interference in 802.11 WLANs. AnalyzeAir software provides IT network professionals with the vision they need into the hidden world of RF, providing them with the ability to see the spectrum in a visible and intelligible format. AnalyzeAir software lets you see, monitor, analyze, and manage all the RF sources and wireless devices that influence your Wi-Fi network's performance and security, even if those devices are unauthorized or transient. AnalyzeAir Trial Software v3.1 highlights the features found in AnalyzeAir Software using a set of saved spectrum files. Replay the data and experience the visibility that AnalyzeAir Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer provides. Note: The trial software is limited to a player version only. It does not communicate with an AnalyzeAir PC card so it does not collect actual spectrum data. Register for this trial now.
|
CIO
Computerworld
CSO
DEMO
GamePro
Games.net
IDG Connect
IDG World Expo
Infoworld
The Industry Standard
ITworld
JavaWorld
LinuxWorld
MacUser
Macworld
Network World
PC World
Playlist
Copyright © 2008 Computerworld Inc. All
rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium
without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited.
Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are
trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
|
