UK Scientists Make Transistor One Atom Long, 10 Atoms Wide 186
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."
Orientation? (Score:4, Funny)
How do you know it's one atom long and ten wide? maybe it's ten atoms long and one wide?
Re:Orientation? (Score:5, Informative)
"The smallest dots that worked as transistors contained as few as five carbon rings - around 10 atoms or 1nm wide."
Somehow that became 10 atoms wide and 1 atom long in the summary.
I know, I know - this sort of thing would never happen on Slashdot...
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(I tried drawing it with ASCII but the lameness filter didn't like it)
And aromatic carbon rings (rings containing conjugated double bonds) are generally 6 carbons (benzene structure) but 5 and greater are possible. Cycloalkanes (carbon rings with no double bonds) can be anywhere from 3 carbons up, but they're not interesting for electronics (and 3 and 4 carbon rings are not very stable due to the large angle strain of the bonds).
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Since it can fall over and loses all thickness, they expect to layer an infinite amount onto a chip, which the marketing people are excited about.
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Don't know about you but I wouldn't like to pay for the cooling system on it.
Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
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Further, what exactly is a "liquid gas"?
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Informative)
You will often see it in reference to Natural Gas, as 'Liquid Natural Gas' Since the term 'Natural Gas' is more of a formal name, than any descriptor of a chemical and its state.
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Transistor load (capacitance) is determined by the area of the gate, or Width * Length.
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Plus, if you read the article you'll see that it's the 'dot' containing at least 5 carbon nano rings (or something) that makes transistor that is 10 atoms (1 nanometer) wide, but the person doing the summary got r confused.
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U of Glasgow Made Similar Nano-Switch Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientists at the University of Galsgow have claimed a breakthrough that enables them to store 500,000 gigabytes squeezed onto one square inch [nanowerk.com] 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 [nature.com]. In related news, researchers have claimed to harness terahertz radiation using circuits [telegraph.co.uk].
Another advancement in nanotechnology, thought I would post it here since it's probably not going to be used.
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So, unfortunately, this breakthrough does not enable them to store 500 terabytes in one square inch.
Making things ridiculously small is a good first step, but without the ability to fabricate huge numbers of them side by side in an organized and connected fashion, it remains just that.
I'm encouraged that lots is being done with carbon; it seems this area is receiving more and more focus, which will hopefully lead to solving some of the fabrication i
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Obligatory Isaac Asimov quote:
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It certainly made me laugh.
"which has the potential to replace silicon" (Score:2)
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If you're only interested in products and don't care about discoveries, then you're on the wrong site. Try amazon.com instead.
Science or Magic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Science or Magic (Score:4, Funny)
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Any sort of engineer, scientist, or technician should be using the units that make their math the easiest. For computer science, power-of-two units for storage is correct. If we CS people have to occasionally write KiB (pronounced "kay" or "kilobyte") every once and a while when talking to communication engineers, that's fine - but I could care less about confusing the general public by 2% on hard disk size.
Re:Science or Magic (Score:4, Interesting)
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According to Mark Erlin of the University of Oxford future computers will be powered by magic. He thinks that we are now close on the threshold to what they call in technical terms "transphysical barrier to a multi-folded dimension" which is a complicated way to say "magic". "This is an amazing dicovery! This is probably the best thing since sliced bread!" says Erlin. "We have discovered this magic by studying very small transistors, no more than a few ato
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Yeah, I probably created 150 of these before breakfast, but I just don't have the equipment to observe it.
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The recently-deceased Arthur C. Clarke.
It's a question of units (Score:2)
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?
Magic cannot exist in our culture (Score:2)
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.
T
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First, I'm going to open my windows to make sure my engine isn't fumigating me.
Then, yeah, I'm going to have to go with magic. That is probably more realistic than a farmer that can make robotic/cybernetic animals.
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If I couldn't figure out how it COULD happen I might eventually go to magic, but that is a long way away and very unlikely.
Magic can't exist because that is not what most people assume is the cause. For instance, there was a huge number of UFO sightings over air bases in the 50's. These are essentially all because Jets were just invented and they radically changed the shape, speed and general power of planes well beyond what people expected.
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If I couldn't figure out how it COULD happen I might eventually go to magic, but that is a long way away and very unlikely.
Oh very true, in fact, I can't think of a situation where I would call something magic, unless it did indeed violate physical laws I knew to be true. Perhaps that would be a better definition of magic. Something that requires a violation of proven physical laws.
I'd actually like to discuss the social aspect of magic a bi
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Old news (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Old news (Score:5, Funny)
You reject our generous offer? Very well, we will mobilize our armies for WAR. You will pay for your foolish pride!
Power consumption? (Score:2)
A quick search said nothing about power consumption. If these transistors are really small, but leaky as hell with subthreshold [wikipedia.org] 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?
Re:Power consumption? (Score:5, Funny)
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Liquid gas? (Score:4, Funny)
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alas (Score:3, Insightful)
Etching is good, but it's only one part (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
The really impressive thing (Score:2)
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...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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For that matter: how vulnerable is the graphene crystalline structure to radiation damage? Carbon bonds can be among the strongest in nature.
Re:There's such a thing as too small. (Score:4, Interesting)
The most obvious way is to build in some level of redundancy. Naively you can have dozens of redundant sub-units, and use things like "majority voting" to pull out the signal from the noise. In practice there are more elegant ways to do this (e.g. error correction). Many modern chips do indeed have some redundancies so that even with manufacturing defects, the chip still runs (perhaps with some reduction in functionality). Organizing the chip so that failsafe-checks occur during operation is certainly possible.
Again, check out the book for more details. The point is that these questions have been thought about and they are not insurmountable. The rate of defects generated from spurious environmental damage (e.g. cosmic rays) is low enough that it can be overcome with fairly straightforward engineering.
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Proper terminology (Score:3, Funny)
They're in the UK, so I believe the proper term for them is "boffins".
Room temperature? (Score:2)
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The only sane way to calculate "multiples" of temperature is in kelvins, and room temperature is about 293 kelvins. Double would mean 586 kelvins, which is about 316 degrees Celsius.
Whenever e.g. the rate of chemical reactions are proportional to the temperature, it always means the temperature in kelvins.
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Most of the population on this planet assumes celcius when talking about room temperature, meaning that my processors are always at least at 42 degrees.
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Most of the population on this planet assumes celcius when talking about room temperature, meaning that my processors are always at least at 42 degrees.
That's fine, but then don't go calling it "twice the temperature", 'cause it isn't, no matter how you slice it. And it's "Celsius", by the way - two esses, not two cees.
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And btw room temperature is 21 celsius, so it's 294.15 kelvins, not 293.
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The problem with the information you gave doesn't require a degree in "alchemy" to see - you didn't say degrees C or F; or kelvins; for the temperature, and double room temperature in degrees C is very different than double room temperature in degrees F or in kelvins.
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Some units are implied in day-to-day conversations. If someone tells you he's 20, you'll understand he implied 20-years old, you won't start asking them "20 days old? 20 minutes old? 20 years old according to the chinese calendar?"
meh (Score:4, Funny)
Okay.... (Score:2)
Moore's Law (Score:2)
Nanotech is great stuff. (Score:2)
No Joke. This is History. This is Change. (Score:2)
I'm currently working on the psychology of GSVs;
I'll need to add a fourth dimension to get volume, but it works.
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=Smidge=
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Patents, perhaps?
Re:Cool, but call me when it is cheap. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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?
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I'm guessing the mobs will only turn to green energy when the government legalises marijuana and electric VW camper vans.
Re:think step up transformers (Score:4, Insightful)
Step-up DC transformers would require an inverter (to convert to AC), followed by an AC transformer, followed a full-wave rectifier (to convert back to DC). Want to calculate the minimum efficiency lost on each step? Yeah, me neither.
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Something that gets you to and from the store and wherever you work is my definition of practical, and that level of pe
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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 fue
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And that still doesn't make an all-electric car infeasible.
=Smidge=
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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 budg
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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 w
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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=
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1 hidden comment (Score:2)
Re:1 hidden comment (Score:5, Funny)
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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
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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 an
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From TFS (Score:2)
If you want something to worry about, worry about power usage and heat dissapation.
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