IBM makes nano circuit

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using carbon nanotubes, ibm researchers have built the smallest computer logic circuit ever created: a two-transistor “not gate” the size of a single carbon molecule. ibm's phaedon avouris, manager of nanoscale science at ibm research, made the announcement yesterday at an american chemical society meeting, touting the achievement as the next big step in the replacement of today's silicon-based computer chips and the preservation of moore's law.

the nano-circuit not gate (voltage inverter circuit) has a positive transistor and a negative transistor and can change a 1 to a 0 (binary) and vice versa. this is the simplest of the three necessary computing circuits (and gates and or gates are the next steps), but is a big breakthrough because past work with carbon nanotubes has yielded only positive (“p-type”) transistors. by heating p-type transistors in a vacuum, the ibm researchers created negative (“n-type”) transistors for the first time; the team also found that selected portions of a carbon nanotube could be heated and converted to n-type, which allowed them to create the single carbon molecule not gate. the nanotube circuit also produced a strong enough signal output “to drive other gates or circuits,” meaning that complex circuits in chains should be possible. that in turn means that molecular computer chips consisting of “many transistor-embedded logic circuits” can be a viable alternative to today's microprocessors. carbon nanotube-based chips are expected to be at least as fast as today's silicon-based ones, and should produce less heat (since they'll use less power).

ibm hopes to start building carbon nanotube circuits in the next two years or so, but doesn't expect any product to be marketable for another 10 to 15 years.

sam's opinion
i don't know about you, but i get pretty excited when i read about these nano-computing discoveries. as the a.p. article points out, there are plenty of other teams researching nano-computing and coming up with breakthroughs, and that's even more exciting, since there won't be a single company controlling the pace of progress. at the same time we've also got lots of folks looking into quantum computing, though i have a feeling that's a bit further down the timeline from realization (though you never know). even knowing that nanotube-based molecular chips are probably 15 years away (though i won't be surprised to see them sooner) isn't enough to make these findings less exciting: imagine building a micrprocessor out of something 100k times smaller than one of your hairs but that's 10 times stronger than steel. incredible.

another thing that struck me when i was reading the articles was that moore's law is still intact after 35 years or so. scientists have been predicting an end to moore's law in the next 10 or 15 years because of silicon's physical limitations, but i'm just amazed that a prediction made in 1965 is still holding water. the pace and scope of technological change has been mind-boggling in the last 10 years alone … just think of how big computers were back in 1965, and now we're talking about a single-molecule circuit. who could've guessed gordon moore would hit the nail on the head even now when we're looking at 2ghz processors?

i also would like to point out that the guy running ibm research's nano-science section has perhaps the most appropriate-sounding name for this kind of cool research. phaedon? perfect. :)

user comments 47 comment(s)

nice(11:16am est mon aug 27 2001)hey, the researchers have to have something to do with all those ee majors, eh? – by beefstu01

good to see…(11:16am est mon aug 27 2001)that somebody is going to pick up where silicon left off, and give moore's law a bit of breathing room! – by keith soleil

the “elephant in the living room” is that those little nanotubes need to be patterened into unbelievably sophisticated tapestries – in order to “process” anything at all. from what i can tell, no one has ever made a nanotube that actually is positioned “where we wanted it”. like sprinking sugar onto a pie, nanotubes land whereever the hell they feel like it.

the transistor was originally a little block of ge with itsibitsi wires touching the surface. then, they discovered that melting dots of dopant on a thin wafer, it was both more reliable and much higher powered.

then, boffins at texas instruments saw that it could be done on 'one surface' instead of both sides. then they integrated two transistors into a “super transistor”. from there, the first “real” integrated circuit, the rtl nand gate. it had 4 transistors.

but from those earliest beginnings — to now, it has literally been a “straight shot”, of improving photolithographic technique, improving the quality of the silicon wafers, improving the metals and plastics that make up a chip. nothing radical. just ever smaller.

i have no reason to believe that the technology to organize all those pesky nanotubes – would better be used to fabricate 3d chips. today's chip might be 1 cm on a side (or if you prefer, 10,000,000 nanometers) but it is only 100 nanometers “thick”. you could stack a lot of layers into a 1 cm cube. like, 100,000 of them.

a 1 mm “grain of salt” chip would store 1,000 gb.

anyway. nanocomputing is nice, but i predict we'll probably not see practical large-scale uses for it.

– by goatguy

thats nice but(11:41am est mon aug 27 2001)when it comes to computers dont u think we will have molecular computer in 10 to 15 years so who cares, i mean yeah its cool u made it but molecular computers are sapsode to be developed in 3 to 5 years and one is more powerfull then all the supercomputers or some bullshit like that

my 2 cents – by ff

manufacturing(11:47am est mon aug 27 2001)right now, nanotubes are basically made by throwing the carbon into an arc and extracting the good pieces. it's not a very organized manufacturing process, so we are definitely a few years away from seeing these things in printed circuit boards. however, organic polymers are slowly making their way into electronics. i worked with a research group that was examining energy transfer in electro-luminescent polymers. once the problem of longevity is solved, the extremely cheap cost of manufacturing these products will make carbon based electronics much more favorable. – by laserman

then the paranoid side of me starts…(12:32pm est mon aug 27 2001)get a grip: ever read “acts of the apostles”? the basic equation of the story is:

it makes you wonder(1:37pm est mon aug 27 2001)just what is in those flu shots?it seemed that when i was in the army they tried to give us flu shots every month or so, it was crazy! they always got me sick too. so i wonder, was it really a vaccine for the ful, or naonites invading my brain to maek me a killing machine.

crap maeks me wondr even more what the hell is in the antrax vaccine! – by damn government!!

question to ponder(1:44pm est mon aug 27 2001)if this thing is made out of carbon, the basic building block of all living thing, has built in logic that could be viewed as the ability to reason, plus any major advancement in human genome project that might be applied to this, what are we looking at 200 years down the road? or 50 for that matter. and does this carbon have the abilty to grown or could it in the future? just thoughts – by eek the cat

re: eek the cat(1:57pm est mon aug 27 2001)during your lifetime, this carbon will be as close to sentient as a number 2 pencil.

t1000(3:37pm est mon aug 27 2001)“yes, the time has finally come. according to the world famous terminator movies skynet went on-line on monday, august 4th, 1997 and becomes self aware at 2:14 a.m. august 29th, 1997. things take a turn for the worse at that point and soon the missiles are zipping around the planet.”

(check out for more info) – by hungrywolverine

t1000 point(3:55pm est mon aug 27 2001)the interesting thing i was reading off of popular mechanics was the fact that e-bombs (electromagnetic) are comming into play in the “world” arsenals. even though i didn t read the article completely, i wonder how/if something this small could be effected…..

– by id-10-t error

ibm is too cool(6:23pm est mon aug 27 2001)i like how they have changed into a great company. research seem to be king there unlike microsoft where coping is king. – by rax

changed….ibm?(8:06pm est mon aug 27 2001)uhh…ibm has been the research stalwart…the only reason they dropped in the mid/late 80's is because everyone started to clone pcs…now they are back up at the top again..but always number one at ibm has beenresearch…they haven't changed…they are simply reaffirming their position… – by distempered

quit whining!(9:43pm est mon aug 27 2001)quit whiner like a cheap trash yourself. get over with it. go recyle your soda cans make some money then buy it. go education to be as a geek and nerd so you can make a millions dollar. i would take a class to study a mircosoft. i want work there. enough moving around your ass on your couch. get up and get a bigger life. i have no choice but i have career ahead of me to met bill gates. so long cheap trash lazy butt lol! – by lol

faeries and other such tech(1:27am est tue aug 28 2001)i sat in a lecture 11 years ago on circuits built using nanotubules. it's an interesting idea, but clearly progress has been slow. i think it's more likely that nanotubules might find some use as cladding, insulation, or some other passive kind of function. you might want to check out what kind of gain, current and q they're getting out of their n-type fullerine transistors. my guess is that a practical device of any kind is way out of the question. – by papasmurf

moore again…(1:44am est tue aug 28 2001)just touching back to the second comment, in terms of computer power increasing, moore's law was blown out of the water. i belive the actual rate was something along two to three times what moore projected.

as for quantum computing, i agree, probably the next step beyond nano, but to the belife that nano would be eschewed for 3d chips… well, if this were only a question of computing, i would agree, that would be the next logical step before nano. but we are talking nano-tech. development in one area feeds into movment in the others. medicen, computing, enginering, there is an incredible amount of money going into research. many pudits belive that nano-tech, when we get it right, will be the eqivalence of harnessing electricity. nano tech is the future from many points of view, obviously ibm, ray kurswiel, mit, ucla berkely… the list is a long one.

as for practical large scale uses, what pratical use did a house wife in the seventys have for a personal computer? and what pratical uses are there now… the adoption of a set of technoligies lies only partialy in the merits of the technology itself. it's the applications of such that makes or breaks the industry. much is left to be seen, but i have high hopes. – by r-mani

3d chips?(2:38am est tue aug 28 2001)cool, but how do you cool this chip? – by evert

odds and ends…(8:30am est tue aug 28 2001)3d chips: if one layer gets my cpu temp (with decent cooling) to ~40 degrees c, how much heat is 100,000 layers going to produce? and how the *** do you propose to dissapate the heat from the middle? :p

carbon molecues? yeah, a nice-sized diamond ) – by charmaka

the heat is on(1:37pm est tue aug 28 2001)infommercial presenter: “the 3d nano chips will naturatlly consume so little energy, that they will practically cool themselves while working !”

if that doesn't work, they can always put in a few nano fans between the layers.… or generate steam to power the nano fans using a nano steam engine, thus saving even more power ! – by bogglesthemind

carbon molecule(7:28pm est tue aug 28 2001)this is probably the single most non-descriptive non-scientific term i have ever heard. how many damn atoms are in this modelcule? how are they arranged? i had hydrocarbons for breakfast. that's not saying much is it? either they are being top secret or think we're too dumb to ask what a carbon molecule is. – by bugs bunny

some where people started talking about 3d nanochips. one of the things that can be done with molecular level activity is to rely on the quantum mechanics for the activity inside the nanocomputer. at room temperature all the way down to absolute zero molecules are vibrating and transfers of energy take place. so the computer would require no power at all! only if it was frozen all the way down to absolute zero would it stop proceesing information.

there has been lab experiments that have demonstrated the extreme processing speed of molecular circuits operating at around 100 trillion cycles per second. if you use the wired donut approach and 4 cubic nanometers for space, you can have a computer the size of a sugar cube with a trillion of processors and 18.4 quintilion (2^64) of bytes and a proccessing speed of septillions (trillions of trillion s)floating point operations per second!!! – by peter.

carbon molecule(4:18am est thu aug 30 2001)probably means a nanotube, sp2 bonded carbon atoms form a graphite-like 2d sheet which is rolled into a tube then capped at either end with half of a buckyball. that's not the process by the way, that's just how a capped single-walled nanotube looks. the tube could be as long as you like, but isn't yet… – by xamos

uhm…(5:28am est sat sep 01 2001)what the heck is a nano….? i thougth it was a kind of weapon the borg use in voyager. anyways…can nano technology as a whole be used to either move or manipulate carbon atom positions or structures? or can they be used to synthesis certain objects? or can they be used to cure people at nano levels?

i think this nano thing would be pretty festive if it ever came to light, but ibm should be careful. they work so hard on it, someone breaks into the lab and sells the tech. to intel, and then they release 20447ghz cpu's that fit on your thumbnail, and then the take over the world, raping our dogs and cats repeatedly until their heads explode, and we have to wipe green toxic goo of the living room walls….

oh, i'm sorry. i'll take my tablets now. – by raspertril

carbon molecule(2:14am est fri sep 07 2001)various 'real' carbon molecules: c60, c72, c84… these are true molecules as they have a precise structure and are self-contained, ie. they are not an 'infinite' lattice like diamond or graphite. carbon nanotubes can be simply a c60 ball cut in half with a rolled up cylinder of graphite like carbon inserted in between the two halves. this way, an almost infinite variety of true carbon molecules can and do exist. – by another chem geek

opinions are like …(10:58pm est sun sep 09 2001)people who can't learn basic spelling and grammar are endangering their brain cell trying to comprehend quantum computing theories.opinions should be reserved for people who can form complete thoughts, words, and sentences. – by bubba

nano – taliban(10:36pm est thu oct 25 2001)isn't there a way to unleash some nano-bombs (not chemical or biological) on the taliban? kind of like swarms of mosquitos or nats, but with one hell of a bite.

– by pir sayed ahmad gail

nano – taliban(8:27am est thu nov 08 2001)or maybe we can make a nano sas, send them in on nano choppers, and drop them into the talibans ears on nano parachutes. then we could either destroy their brains from within, or completely re-build them so they can make trainers for nike! – by bilgemonkey

electrophysics(6:10pm est wed feb 06 2002)when i read this first i was not really shocked because as u guess all roads in new technologies leads to a new way to small worlds. in addition it is obvious that future will be the world of quantum mechanics and electronics namely electrophysics and the names that we call it for now is nanotecnology , quantum electronics. – by atli

supercomputers(11:58pm est fri mar 01 2002)i would like to askwhether these sc have the power themself to link to all other computer on the basis on computer is and not on internet – by prabhakar

buckyballs(9:40pm est sun jul 07 2002)closed ind tubes now are in a whole different physics class than a true tube. capped tubes, like a glass, now have a resonance interference to deal with, and this could be mistaken for cycles, when in actuality, its just interference resonance. just a thought. – by tubes and glassses

edubucation(2:04am est sun oct 06 2002)what kind of education do i need to go into this field? i'm currently in first year materials engineering (that means i can switch in 2nd year). as far as nanotechnology is concerned, materials engineering only deals with 'synthesis of nanomaterials'. – by tim

chek in going to inside(12:19am est mon jul 14 2003)plz sir help memy face is nowadays is going to short by means of chek chek is is going to inside day by day– by romash