Nanotechnology in Electronics

Presentation By: Abhishek Raj(2009me20652) Rahul Kumar(2009me20676) Sarthak Muraal(2009me20679)

What is Nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is the creation of functional materials, devices, and systems through control of matter on the nanometer (1 to 100 nm) length scale and the exploitation of novel properties and phenomena developed at that scale.

Nano-scale Devices: Electronic devices that are designed with lateral features of 100 nm or less.

Nanotechnology makes
Smaller Transistors Smaller Memory Smaller Circuitry

Moores Law

Moore's law: The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every 18 to 24 months.

By shrinking transistors, designers can squeeze more transistors into a chip.

Nanoelectronic Devices
Single Electron Transistor. Nanowires Carbon Nano Tubes Solid State Quantum Devices Quantum Dots and Arrays Nano scale MOSFET

What is a SET
The single electron transistor is a new type of switching device that uses controlled electron tunneling to amplify current.

Fabrication
Fabrication of single electron transistors is done using focused ion beam (FIB) etching technology.

Application of SETs
Quantum computers -1000x Faster Microwave Detection High Sensitivity Electrometer

Nanowires
A nanowire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (109 meters). Aspect ratios (length-to-width ratio) of 1000 or more. Semiconductor nanowire crossings will be important to the future of digital computing. Because of their high aspect ratio, nanowires are also uniquely suited to dielectrophoretic manipulation.

An SEM image of a 15 micrometer nickel wire.

Synthesis Of Nanowires
Top down approach: Fabrication from a large piece of material using lithography and electrophoresis. Bottom up approach: Nanowire is synthesized by the combination of constituent ad-atoms. A common technique for creating a nanowire is the VaporLiquid-Solid (VLS) synthesis method: It is a Chemical Vapor Deposition method(CVD). Source Material is a feed gas which is exposed to a catalyst . Good catalysts are liquid metal Nano-clusters like gold.

Carbon Nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are long meshed wires of carbon Longest tubes up to 1mm long and few nanometers thick made by IBM.
Carbon Nanotubes 0.6-1.8 nm in diameter 45 Billion Pascals Bent and straightened without damage Estimated at 109 A/cm2 Comparatively Si wires at least 50nm thick Steel alloys have 2 Billion P. Metals fracture when bent and restraightened Cu wires burn at 106 A/cm2

Property Size Strength Resilience Conductivity

Electrical Properties of CNT

Carbon nanotubes can be metallic or semiconductor depending on their chirality. C = n a1 + m a2 Chiral Vector C is defined as the vector from one open end of the tube to the other after it is rolled. If (n-m) is divisible by 3, the tube is metallic If (n-m) is not divisible by 3, the tube is semiconducting.

Quantum Dots and Arrays

Dot occupied by Electron Inter-dot Barriers Outer Barriers

Dot unoccupied

3-dimensional island tunneling barrier State determined by presence of electron and not by conduction. Quantum cell array (QCA) is a lattice of these cells with 2 electrons confined. Occupied electrons are furthest from each other due to repulsive forces.

Fabrication Of Quantum Dots

Lithographically patterned gate electrodes, or by etching on two-dimensional electron gases in semiconductor heterostructures. StranskiKrastanov growth Quantum dots sometimes occur spontaneously in quantum well structures due to monolayer fluctuations in the well's thickness.

StranskiKrastanov growth
Self-assembled quantum dots nucleate spontaneously under certain conditions during molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metallorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) When a material is grown on a substrate to which it is not lattice matched. The resulting strain produces coherently strained islands on top of a two-dimensional wetting layer. This growth mode is known as StranskiKrastanov growth. The islands can be subsequently buried to form the quantum dot.

Applications of Quantum Dots

Enormous applications in Solid State Quantum Computations. Quantum Dots may increase efficiency and reduce the cost of Photovoltaic cells. Can be used as light-emitting diodes(LEDs)

Nano-Scale MOSFET

Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor(MOSFET)

Is a transistor used for amplifying or switching electronic signals Three terminal device Source, gate and drain Vg controls the conduction from source to drain Half thickness of the gate is called Feature size Current feature sizes in production 90nm (Intel Pentium 5) Demonstrated feature sizes up to 20nm (IBM).

MOSFET Fabrication
Present Day Fabrication Method (Lithography): IC Pattern is projected in 1 cm2 increments onto a silicon wafer using UV light and a series of lenses that reduce the pattern to some given required resolution. Each 1 cm2 section contains roughly 109 picture elements (pixels).
Nanoscale Devices: Most features of the typical nanoscale device are too small to be made like present day devices so a sharp focused beam of electrons is used to build the 1 cm2 pattern one device at a time. Of course, this is way too slow for mass fabrication.

CMOS Circuits
Complementary metaloxide semiconductor(CMOS) is a technology for constructing integrated circuits. CMOS technology is used in microprocessors, microcontrollers, static RAM The MOSFET is used in digital CMOS logic, which uses p- and n-channel MOSFETs as building blocks.

Targets Of Nano Electronics

Beyond CMOS Technology Circuit Technology Solutions Nano-manufacturing and joint equipment assessment

Target outcomes
a) Beyond CMOS technology
New switches and interconnects . Advanced system integration technology and new methods for computation. Emerging memories targeting the concept of non-volatile universal memory. Carbon based electronic devices; Novel materials for interconnects

Target outcomes
b) Circuit-technology solutions
Architectures including energy efficiency, spin devices; silicon with molecular switches; ferromagnetic logic; heterogeneous and morphic system architectures. Circuit design methodologies and tools Modelling and simulation Design-technology solutions for energy efficiency, high reliability and robustness.

Nanotechnology in Storage Devices

This is a 2 gigabyte hard drive. It weighs about 70 pounds. It was first used in the 1980s. Its cost at that time ranged from $80,000 to $140,000.

Image by HighPoint Learning

2 GB in 1980s $80,000

2 GB in 1990s $200

2 GB in 2010 $5

Current research shows that by using nanotechnology, 1000 GB of memory can fit on the head of this pin. 1000 GB is 1 Terabyte.

The Photograph of the Fabricated Chip

The whole chip

A single pixel

References
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSFET#CMOS_circuits www.understandingnano.com/nanotechnology-electronics.html http://www.onboard-technology.com/pdf_ottobre2005/100507.pdf Lecture Slides

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