Quantum Tunneling

Jordan Packham
Salt Lake Community College Physics 1010

Scientific understanding of quantum tunneling is increasing at an amazing rate, allowing

us to build more complex and smaller devices. The amazing progress of engineering has

pushed us closer and closer to the limits of our understanding, requiring greater scientific
research to continue progressing. Some effects of quantum tunneling in nature can help us
see how useful quantum mechanics can be if we apply it in ways that are advantageous to us.
The continuing shrinking and complexity of micro devices is slowing down due to quantum
tunneling, however if we could use quantum tunneling to our advantage to start building these
smaller devices we may be able to more easily decrease the size and complexity of our micro
and soon nano devices.
Quantum tunneling is an extremely fascinating phenomenon where particles can
seemingly pass through a barrier where we normally would think they should not be able to. To
help understand quantum tunneling we can think of particles as a wave instead of an object
that is sitting still. With wave like characteristics we would use probability to determine where
the particle is, instead of saying exactly where the particle is at a particular time. If you
releases a small particle near an object, the greatest possibility is it will be on the same side of
the barrier, but there will also be small possibilities that it will pass through the barrier and even
end up inside of the barrier. This quantum process is what can be advantageous to some
processes and disadvantageous depending on how we are engineering our devices.
Nuclear fusion is a process that happens in our sun that is greatly assisted by quantum
tunneling. On earth we have to heat hydrogen up one hundred times hotter than the sun to get
a fusion reaction (Reich, 2011). Quantum tunneling allows many hydrogen particles to fuse
creating nuclear fusion even if they are not hot enough to, helping create much of the energy
that is coming from the sun. This awesome example of quantum tunneling can show us what
great things can happen when quantum tunneling is involved.

As semiconductors have continued to increase in size the effect quantum tunneling on

them has greatly increased. The smaller this distance becomes between the source and drain
of a transistor, the harder it has become to prevent leakage from the source and drain when
we do not want the circuit activated. 22 nanometers means there is about 50 silicon atoms in
here between source and drain. (Morello, 2013). Since microprocessors have started being
produced, there have been continual shrinks in microprocessors for the physical size, and also
their complexity. One of the first processors that was sold by Intel, the Intel 4004 was built on a
10m (micrometer) node. Gordon Moore who was a researcher for Fairchild Semiconductor is
famous for Moores law, where he compared the number of components or transistors in a log
scaled to increase every 2 years. Gordon Moore later in his career helped co found Intel, and
Intel has been able to continue this trend of doubling transistors on a chip every 2 years this
far. For many years Intel has operating on a tick tock schedule, one year introducing a shrink in
die, and the next introducing an improvement on the current die size. Intel has stated that
eventually it may not be able to continue indefinitely as the die gets smaller hurdles such as
quantum tunneling become a stronger and stronger force. At this time Intel is currently selling
processors using a 14nm node and has current plans to ship products on a 10nm process in
2017. Intel and many others know this cannot continue indefinitely and so research is
increasing steadily to discover ways to continue producing more efficient and faster products.
As we continue to engineer smaller and smaller devices our understanding of these effects
and ways to overcome them have increased immensely, however the pace we have been
decreasing will continue to decrease if we can only focus on one side and we may be able to
break out of this if we can use certain quantum effects to our advantage.

Tunneling magnetoresistance is another instance of a technology made to combat the

quantum tunneling effect in electronic devices that are getting increasingly smaller. The
insulating layer is so thin ( a few nm or less) that electrons can tunnel through the barrier if a
bias voltage is applied between the two metal electrodes across the insulator (Tsymbal, 2003).
Tunneling magnetoresistance would be achieved by whatever process you would use to align
the molecules. This is indeed a fascinating technology that helped push hard drives further, to
increase density and storage. Since this technology came out there have been many new
increasing densities that are being reached as you can currently buy an 8 terabyte hard drive,
a much greater density from the 400GB drives back in 2003. Drive sizes continue to increase
and new technologies are allowing us to go smaller and smaller, but there is always a question
of how long this can go on.
Touch screens using quantum tunneling to increase sensitivity to touch. For every tenth
of a nanometer you move these particles, you are typically talking about a factor of 10 change
in the current between particles (Moriarty, 2010). This ingenious use of quantum tunneling is
awesome to see, as many other devices that are subject to quantum tunneling are usually
prohibited by it instead of gaining an advantage for it. The screen works by having an
insulating material keep the conductive parts of the screen away from each other, but when
you push them in quantum tunneling will start to take effect and the electrons will be able to
flow through the insulating layer. With this as an example if we are able to start reversing our
role with micro devices and quantum tunneling to use it as an advantage we may be able to
continually decrease the size of our devices and use what has been one of our greatest
hurdles and turn it into a speed bump.

Quantum computers are an amazing new technology that work in conjunction with
quantum entanglement and quantum tunneling. Quantum computers are able to perform some
tasks much quicker than current computers that use classical transistors. Tasks that require
great parallelism can be decreased from millions of years down to a few minutes. Quantum
computers differ from classical computers as tasks that require a lot of operations to come to a
certain result are greatly decreased. Qubits obtain much of their increased parallelism from the
fact that a qubit can be both a 1 and 0 at the same time, where a classical transistor can only
be 1 or 0 but not both at the same time. The advantage of the qubit to be both a 1 and a 0 at
the same time can help with things such as computing prime numbers. "If we had a quantum
computer, we could use it to model quantum systems." (Ambainis, 2014). There are certain
algorithms that we can use that take advantage of quantum interference to retrieve our results
of the tests without losing the state of the others In the non-quantum world, if there are two
possible paths toward one result and each path is taken with a probability , the overall
probability of obtaining this result is += . Quantumly, the two paths can interfere,
increasing the probability of success to 1. (Ambainis,2014). These current quantum
computations are great but unfortunately quantum computers are not faster at single
operations so they will only excel at these certain tasks that require a lot of operations to
complete, or some other special operations. As quantum computing continues to develop there
will be increases in speed and usability, and as more quantum computing algorithms are
developed we will be able to use them more and more. Perhaps someday with greater
improvements or redefinition of processors we can replace classical computers or help change
them in a way that allows them to scale down allowing greater power efficiency and greater
processing power.

As our production of smaller and more complex devices increases there will need to be
an increase in scientific research of quantum effects. We can remind ourselves in nature where
such events are occurring that there can be great power in using tunneling. While many
attempts are made to circumvent quantum events, continuing on these paths could eventually
lead to a barrier that we cannot surpass. If we want to continue decreasing the size of our
devices and bring them down to smaller levels, it could greatly enhance our ability to decrease
the size by using quantum effects to our advantage when we build these devices.

Andris Ambainis Spring 2014. Institute for Advanced Study: What Can We Do with a Quantum
Computer? Retrieved from https://www.ias.edu/ias-letter/ambainis-quantum-computing

Evgeny Y. Tsymbal Jan 1st, 2003. University of Nebraska - Lincoln: Spin-dependent tunneling
in magnetic tunnel junctions. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1018&context=physicstsymbal

Henry Reich Aug 14th, 2011. MinutePhysics: What is Quantum Tunneling? Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=cTodS8hkSDg&feature=iv&src_vid=gS1dpowPlE8&annotation_id=annotation_23616
Professor Andrea Morello June 17th 2013. Veritasium:How Does a Quantum Computer Work?
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_IaVepNDT4
Professor Andrea Morello May 27th 2013. 2Veritasium:Transistors & The End of Moores Law.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtI5wRyHpTg
Professor Philip Moriarty Feb 24th 2010. Sixty Symbols:Touch Screens and Quantum
Tunnelling. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI5q6OqSo4s