Carbon nanowires for future chip

Two teams of researchers in Australia and Sweden have achieved important results in nanofabrication techniques. Realizing a nanowire around which was literally wrapped a metal gate

Rome - There are those who try to use the carbon nanowires to refound the entire castle electronics and microchip manufacturing, and who experiences the creation of nanowires in which you advance above traditional research - of course without disdaining potential applications in the development of higher performance chips.

The second group includes two teams of researchers at Lund University in Sweden and the University of New South Wales in Australia, whose collaboration has resulted in the realization of a "wrap-gate" of concentric metal, a component of transistor in which the metal that acts from gate has been wrapped around the entire surface of the nanowire.

The researchers reached their goal thanks to a simplification of the manufacturing process by etching a single step and reports the results in a study released online by the specialist publication Nano Letters. The nanowire-bundle is born from the focusing of the two teams on the difficulty nell'accorpare a greater number of transistors in the same physical space.

The solution currently envisaged, namely the use of transistor-type FinFET with orientation towards the top, has the disadvantage of making the more complicated control of the current flow, while the problem does not arise with a gate coated entirely on a single nanowire in direct contact with the substrate.

The nanowire-bundle made by researchers could first of all favor the study of quantum phenomena, and the use of gold as the metal of the wrap-gate would have an "attractive potential" for the realization of biosensors capable of "binding" with antibodies and other polypeptides.

 

19/04/2011

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Translated via software

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Source:

Italian version of ReteArchitetti.it