Are we starting to see device developments at the atomic level?\u00a0 During 2017, there have been many stories on graphene and other two-dimensional materials.\u00a0 Various companies have started developing production capabilities.\u00a0 Yes, graphene and similar material are only one atom thick.\u00a0 Does this make them at the atomic level?\u00a0 In one dimension, the answer is yes.\u00a0 The other dimensions are much larger.\u00a0 What we are starting to see is the development of devices that combine different two-dimensional materials to produce interesting devices.<\/p>\n
A team consisting of University of Texas \u2013 Austin researchers collaborating with Peking University researchers has develop a very thin and very dense memory. [Reference 1]\u00a0 Previously, semiconductor fabrication has separate areas on a device for computing circuity and the memory storage.\u00a0 The researchers have called the devices \u201catomristors\u201d to emphasize their work should improve on the capabilities of memristors.\u00a0 Their technical paper is available through reference #2.\u00a0 The increase in density is due to the application of multiple two-dimensional materials.\u00a0 The entire memory cell is less than 2 nanometers thick.\u00a0 While they did not mention this fact in the general publications, these devices should be faster and require reduced power for comparable semiconductor devices performing the same functions.<\/p>\n
Memristors are not disappearing.\u00a0 They are a type of Re(sistive)RAM, which was projected to replace NAND.\u00a0 Memristors work by changing the resistance of the material.\u00a0 The use of the memristors is different in that the change in the material in not necessarily binary but can be considered analog.\u00a0 Of course, all the semiconductors are based upon on and off states.\u00a0 So, to fully use the capabilities it requires something that is more analog based.\u00a0 As mentioned last year, there are solid-state vacuum tubes, which are analog.\u00a0 Maybe there is some interesting possibilities that can employ both types of devices.<\/p>\n
As the speed of calculations increase, the issue becomes the time lag in getting signals across the semiconductor device.\u00a0 It might seem strange that there is a signal lag across the such a small dimension but that is actually the case.\u00a0 Researchers are looking at using optical fiber to transmit the signals.\u00a0 This creates other complexity for the circuitry in converting signals on both ends of the transmissions.\u00a0 As semiconductors dimensions continue to shrink, the size of key features will be well below 10 nanometer.\u00a0 There are issues with making these small features in mass production, the size is below any existing light source for lithography to create the patterns,\u00a0 The semiconductor industry has been creative in the development of sources that produce features well below the Rayleigh limit (wavelength\/8).<\/p>\n
Current tools use immersion lithography to create the majority of very fine images employed today.\u00a0 This process requires the use of multiple masks per individual layer.\u00a0 This is an expensive process.\u00a0 The application of EUV (13.5nm) has the potential for smaller features.\u00a0 It is anticipated the EUV will be coming into semiconductor manufacturing in a major way.\u00a0 The challenge is the production of features that are less than 5nm.\u00a0 If the images need to have a 10% range of feature sizes, that means controlling the features to 0.5nm (or 5 Angstroms).<\/p>\n
We will be seeing more experimental tools that can measure\/image features with accuracies that are much less than 1nm.\u00a0 It should be an interesting year.<\/p>\n
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References<\/p>\n
Are we starting to see device developments at the atomic level?\u00a0 During 2017, there have been many stories on graphene and other two-dimensional materials.\u00a0 Various companies have started [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc-ramblings","category-nano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}