Nanotechnology in Electronics
What is Nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is a field of research and innovation that is concerned with building materials and devices on the scale of atoms and molecules. It can be said that nanotechnology refers to the technology that operates at the nanometre level.
History of Nanotechnology
For decades computer chip designers have been desperately trying to pack more and more components into the same small amount of space.
In 1965, Gordon Moore predicted Moore’s law: For each new generation of memory chip on the market, the number of components on a chip would quadruple every three years.
- In 1960, Egyptian engineer Mohamed Atalla and Korean engineer Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs fabricated the first MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor).
- In 1962, Atalla and Kahng fabricated a nanolayer-base metal-semiconductor junction transistor that used gold (Au) thin films with a thickness of 10 nm.
- In 1996, Professor James Tour of the University of South Carolina demonstrated his new nanowire, made from long chains of a compound called phenylene.
- In 1997, DARPA awarded a contract to a research group at UC Berkeley to develop a deep sub-micron DELTA transistor.
- In 1997 researchers at Arizona State University announced that they could build a three-molecule photovoltaic device to convert light into tiny amounts of electric current.
- At Stanford University Hongjie Dai also demonstrated the use of carbon nanotubes as conducting wires in 2000.
- They successfully fabricated FinFET devices down to a 17 nm process in 1998,15 nm in 2001, and 10 nm in 2002.
- In 2006, a team of Korean researchers developed a 3 nm MOSFET, the world’s smallest nanoelectronic device.
- Commercial production of nanoelectronic semiconductor devices began onwards the 2010s.
An introduction to Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology represents a revolutionary path for technological development that concerns the management of material at the nanometer scale (one billion times smaller than a meter). Nanotechnology factually means any technology on the nanoscale that has numerous applications in the real world. Nanotechnology literally encompasses the fabrication and application of chemical, physical, and biological systems at scales ranging from individual molecules or atoms to submicron dimensions, and also the integration of these resulting nanomaterials into larger systems. It has the potential to change our perspectives and expectations and provide us with the capability to resolve global issues.
In the 21st century, Nanotechnology is evolving as a cutting-edge technology that has implausible applications in
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Biology
- Electronics
- Materials science, and
- Medicine
The technology aims towards fabricating novel materials and investigating their properties by alteration in the particle size, shape, and distribution.
The need for Nanotechnology
Traditional materials can only go so far before they reach a point where they can’t get any smaller. This is where nanotechnology comes in and has enabled the field of nanoelectronics to emerge-which is when electronic components are created using nanomaterials and are a fraction of the size of components made from conventional ‘bulk’ materials.
Nanotechnology in Electronics
A certain term coined to express the use of Nanotechnology in Electronics is Nanoelectronics. It can be defined as Nanotechnology which allows the integration of purely electronic devices, electronic chips, and circuits.
Nanoelectronics is the term used in the field of nanotechnology for electronic components and research on improvements of electronics such as display, size, and power consumption of the device for practical use.
Nanoelectronics examines the electronic and magnetic properties of systems at the nanoscale. The specialization in Nanoelectronics comprises the study of the electronic and magnetic properties of systems with critical dimensions at the nanoscale. Its key areas include hybrid inorganic-organic electronics, spin electronics, and quantum electronics and it combines aspects of Electrical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Materials Science, and Nanotechnology.
The nanoscale components used in Nanoelectronics fall into two major categories:
- Inorganic nanocrystals
- Organic molecular components.
Inorganic nanocrystals such as nanotubes and nanowires, named after their physical shape, determined through the use of growth kinetics, are typically low-dimensional (up to nanoscale) structures.
Semiconductor nanowires may find a number of uses in chip technology due to the exceptional compatibility of the process with silicon fabrication, deterministic electrical properties, and variability of material selections.
Molecular components (organic) like molecular wires, single-molecule, molecular monolayers, and supramolecules with different schemes
are prepared by amalgamation, and therefore less variation is probable in chemical composition and structural parameters. Molecular nanocomponents have an amazing future in manufacturing low-power, ultra-dense, and low-cost computing chips.
Materials in Nanoelectronics
Widely used materials in nanoelectronics include zero-dimensional materials like quantum dots; one-dimensional materials like nanotubes and nanowires; nanoclusters and nanocomposites; carbon-based materials like carbon nanotubes (CNTs), fullerenes and graphene; etc. Carbon-based materials such as CNTs, fullerenes, and graphene are mainly used in nanoscale operations because of the ability of carbon to form bond with other elements which can easily be changed by physical interactions and chemical reactions.
Nanotechnology: The Applications
Nanotechnology is widely applicable in electronics. One example of such a nanoelectronics device is a graphene-based battery. This is a bulk device that uses nanomaterials, but compared to lithium-ion batteries, it can possess up to 5–6 times the energy density and still be smaller in size than their Li-ion equivalents.
Carbon-based materials are being extensively developed for development in this field. These materials are used for various applications such as Thin-film transistors, electronic textile, printed electronics, artificial skin and muscles, flexible gas sensors, and plastic solar panels.
In recent times, the performance of flexible thin-film transistors (fTFTs) has been enhanced extraordinarily. CNTs have been used by numerous researchers for the fabrication of thin-film transistors (TFTs). Thin-film transistors based on controllable electrostatic self-assembled monolayer SWCNT (Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube) network have been prepared by varying the density of nanotubes on the substrate made up of silicon.
The skin is the human body’s largest organ which shields the body from disease and physical damage and helps to control body temperature. People with third-degree burns lose a huge proportion of their skin layers. These are conditions where the self-healing property of the skin is lost normally.
Artificial skin and muscles are of great support in such kind of situations.
Till now, the solitary another approach of covering up these parts is skin grafting which is an expensive proposition and also involves a lot of uneasiness and pain. Bio-mimicking of artificial muscles or skins prepared from thin layers of polymers and CNTs is currently being fabricated by various scientific groups.
A rubberlike stretchable active matrix has been developed by means of elastic conductors which helps in the production of electronic integrated circuits, can be attached anywhere else, comprising random curved surfaces and movable portions, like the joints of a robot’s arm. A high-resolution thin-film device has been synthesized to sense texture by means of touch.
Printing is a multipurpose aiding technology for electronic products that cannot be prepared with the distinctive Si microelectronics technology.
Polycrystalline and amorphous Si can make large-area products but have little carrier mobility and are stereotypically restricted to a rigid substrate. The smart-printed envelope comprises of an amalgamation of both conventional (thin flexible batteries and resistors) and printed electronic constituents (conductive track layout based on nanosilver ink). Thin-film supercapacitors have been fabricated by means of materials that are printable to create devices having flexibility on plastic.
The dynamic electrodes were prepared using sprayed SWCNTs’ networks aiding as both charge collectors and electrodes. Using an aqueous gel electrolyte (printable) along with a liquid electrolyte (organic), the devices’ performances illustrate very high energy and power densities.
Electronic textile materials in the field of Nanoelectronics can be demarcated as fabrics where functions, interconnections, and electronics are intertwined into them. Clothing can now transform into various colors on command, give you a check-up, and connect by Wi-Fi.
The main concern in this area is to assimilate flexible wires into the textile substrate, connect them to electronics that can endure bending, twisting, and stretching, and power the whole ensemble. The requisite of upholding the textiles’ mechanical flexibility lessens the possible technologies and materials appropriate for the objectives of the assignment: electrical conductivity along with its modulation cannot be attained through traditional semiconductors.
Conductive polymers and CNTs, presently explored in the area of molecular electronics, are the unsurpassed contenders for undertaking such needs.
Research related to Nanotechnology in Electronics i.e. (Nanoelectronics)
Nanoelectronics is an emerging technology. Many applications of the technology are still under research. Researchers are looking into various new applications.
- Researchers at Stanford University have demonstrated a method to make functioning integrated circuits using carbon nanotubes. In order to make the circuit work, they developed methods to remove metallic nanotubes, leaving only semiconducting nanotubes, as well as an algorithm to deal with misaligned nanotubes.
- Researchers at Caltech have demonstrated a laser that uses a nanopatterned silicon surface that helps produce the light with much tighter frequency control than previously achieved. This may allow much higher data rates for information transmission over fiber optics.
- Researchers at UC Berkeley have demonstrated a low power method to use nanomagnets as switches, like transistors, in electrical circuits. Their method might lead to electrical circuits with much lower power consumption than transistor-based circuits.
- Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have demonstrated atomically-thin indium-tin-oxide sheets that may make touchscreens that are cost less to manufacture and well as being flexible and consumes less power.
- Researchers at UC Berkeley have demonstrated a low power method to use nanomagnets as switches, like transistors, in electrical circuits. Their method might lead to electrical circuits with much lower power consumption than transistor-based circuits.
- Researchers at NIST have demonstrated an LED build with zinc oxide nanostructures called fins which generates much higher light output than existing designs of similar size. The researchers also found that raising the current caused the structure to generate laser light.
Summary and topics covered
In this blog, we covered all one needs to know about Nanotechnology in Electronics. The need to invest in Nanotechnology is something that we stressed upon while explaining the ideas. We’ve explained how Nanoelectronics has evolved over the years in terms of technology to create better designs and applications. We’ve also added the research conducted regarding Nanoelectronics and also explained the widely used applications of it in different industries.
Authors: Aniruddha Kulkarni, Khushi Bhartiya, Abhita Lakkabathini, Saket Kolpe.
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