IBM Overcomes One of the Three Barriers to Viable Carbon Nanotube Transistors
October 2nd, 2015Via: MIT Technology Review:
For decades the semiconductor industry has been packing more and more silicon transistors onto each computer chip to keep steadily improving performance, but that process will soon reach its physical limits. Now researchers at IBM say a “major engineering breakthrough” gives reason to be optimistic that a promising alternative to silicon transistors—carbon nanotube transistors—will be ready in time to take silicon’s place.
Carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders made of rolled-up, atom-thick sheets of carbon, have very attractive electrical and thermal properties and theoretically could form the basis of circuits that are much faster and more energy-efficient than today’s silicon ones. But several major manufacturing challenges stand in the way of commercial devices based on nanotube transistors. The IBM researchers say they’ve figured out how to overcome one of them: how to combine nanotubes with the metal contacts that deliver electric current.
