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The end of silicon? IBM reveals carbonnanotube breakthrough that couldrevolutionise computing and lead toultrafast artificial intelligence 'brain chips'

Carbon nanotube transistors can operate at ten nanometers

Equivalent to 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair

Less than half the size of today’s leading silicon technology

Could also mean wearables that attach directly to skin and internal organs

By MARK PRIGG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 12:41 EST, 2 October 2015 | UPDATED: 15:30 EST, 2 October 2015

IBM has revealed a breakthrough in creating transistors using carbon nanotubes.

They say it could revolutionise the way computers are made, and replace silicon.

The carbon chips are set to be dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful.

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BREAKING MOORE'S LAW

Silicon transistors, tiny switches that carryinformation on a chip, have been madesmaller year after year, but they areapproaching a point of physical limitation.

With Moore's Law running out of steam,shrinking the size of the transistor – includingthe channels and contacts – withoutcompromising performance has been a vexingchallenge troubling researchers for decades.

The breakthrough could revolutionise the way computers are made, and replace silicon. Carbon nanotubes(pictured) are a rolled-up form of graphene.

Carbon nanotube transistors can operate at tennanometers, equivalent to 10,000 times thinnerthan a strand of human hair and less than halfthe size of today’s leading silicon technology.

IBM's breakthrough overcomes a major hurdlethat silicon and any semiconductor transistortechnologies face when scaling down.In any transistor, two things scale: the channeland its two contacts.

As devices become smaller, increased contactresistance for carbon nanotubes has hinderedperformance gains until now.

These results could overcome contactresistance challenges all the way to the 1.8nanometer node – four technology generationsaway.

Carbon nanotube chips could greatly improvethe capabilities of high performance computers,enabling Big Data to be analyzed faster,increasing the power and battery life of mobile devices and the Internet of Things, and allowingcloud data centers to deliver services more efficiently and economically.

Carbon nanotubes are a rolled-up form of graphene, which are somewhat similar to Silicon sincethey both have band gap and can be used as the center piece of the transistor – the channel.

Silicon transistors, tiny switches that carry information on a chip, have been made smaller year afteryear, but they are approaching a point of physical limitation.

With Moore's Law running out of steam, shrinking the size of the transistor – including the channelsand contacts – without compromising performance has been a vexing challenge troublingresearchers for decades.

A microscopic image showing the scaling of new CNT contact, showing that the contact size can shrink

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without reducing device performance.

IBM has previously shown that carbon nanotube transistors can operate as excellent switches atchannel dimensions of less than ten nanometers – the equivalent to 10,000 times thinner than astrand of human hair and less than half the size of today’s leading silicon technology.

IBM's new contact approach overcomes the other major hurdle in incorporating carbon nanotubesinto semiconductor devices, which could result in smaller chips with greater performance and lowerpower consumption.

Earlier this summer, IBM unveiled the first 7 nanometer node silicon test chip, pushing the limits ofsilicon technologies and ensuring further innovations for IBM Systems and the IT industry.

By advancing research of carbon nanotubes to replace traditional silicon devices, IBM is paving theway for a post-silicon future and delivering on its $3 billion chip R&D investment announced in July2014.

A Cross-sectional TEM image showing the fabricated nanotube transistor with an end-bonded contact and acontact length below 10 nm.

“These chip innovations are necessary to meet the emerging demands of cloud computing, Internetof Things and Big Data systems,” said Dario Gil, vice president of Science & Technology at IBMResearch.

“As silicon technology nears its physical limits, new materials, devices and circuit architectures mustbe ready to deliver the advanced technologies that will be required by the Cognitive Computing era.

'This breakthrough shows that computer chips made of carbon nanotubes will be able to powersystems of the future sooner than the industry expected.”

CARBON COMPUTING: A Q&A WITH AN IBM RESEARCH'S SHU-JEN HAN

How are silicon and carbon similar when it comes to transistors?

Let's start with carbon because it has so many different allotropes, from carbon nanotubes,graphene to diamonds. But diamonds, for example, are electrical insulators, not semiconductors –which are what we need for a transistor. Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of pure carbon(yes, one-atom-thick) that can conduct current well, but it does not have a bandgap, therefore,transistors made with graphene cannot be switched off. Carbon nanotubes are a rolled-up form ofgraphene, which are somewhat similar to Silicon since they both have band gap and can be usedas the center piece of the transistor – the channel.

Why are carbon nanotubes not in use like silicon?

Silicon has offered many advantages as a transistor material for the last half century. One biggestperhaps was that it forms a great gate dielectric – SiO2. For carbonnanotubes, many materialissues have to be solved to obtain similar high-quality carbon nanotube wafers for devicefabrication. We can’t switch to an entirely new material over night, but silicon is reaching itsscaling limits.

How have you and your team solved this issue of contact resistance?

Carbon nanotubes conduct electricity much faster than silicon, and perhaps more importantly, theyuse less power than silicon. Plus, at just slightly over one nanometer in body thickness, they’resignificantly thinner than today’s silicon, providing good electrostatic control. The challenge has,until now, been how to form high quality contacts between metal electrodes and carbonnanotubes.

In any transistor, two things scale: the channel and its two contacts. It's at the contacts wherecarbon nanotube resistance, like silicon, has hindered performance. Especially when channelcontinues to shrink and channel resistance becomes less and less important. Essentially, currentjust cannot flow into the channel effectively when you hit atomic dimensions.

Dr. Qing Cao and my other teammates at [the IBM Watson Research Center] developed a way, atthe atomic level, to weld - or bond – the metal molybdenum to the carbon nanotubes' ends,forming carbide. Previously, we could only place a metal directly on top of the entire nanotube.

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The resistance was too great to use the transistor once we reached about 20 nm. But welding themetal at the nanotubes' ends, or end-bonded contacts, is a unique feature for carbon nanotubesdue to its 1-D structure, and reduced the resistance down to 9 nm contacts. Key to thebreakthrough was shrinking the size of the contacts without increasing electrical resistance, whichimpedes performance. Until now, decreasing the size of device contacts caused a commensuratedrop in performance.

What is necessary to scale this technology? And what is your next step in this work?

We must scale our carbon nanotube transistor onto a wafer. The challenge is twofold: it includeshow to orient and place these 1 dimensional structures from the solution onto the wafer as well ashow to purify them (initial solution has about 1/3 metallic tubes which are not useful for transistorsand need be removed).

We've developed a way for carbon nanotubes to self-assemble and bind to specialized moleculeson a wafer. The next step is to push the density of these placed nanotubes (to 10 nm apart) andreproducibility across an entire wafer.

What future nanotechnology are you looking forward to?

I can see the potential of our carbon nanotube chips to replace silicon for conventional computinguses. Better transistors can offer higher speed while consume less power. Plus, carbon nanotubesare flexible and transparent. They could be used in futuristic “more than Moore” applications, suchas flexible and stretchable electronics or sensors embedded in wearables that actually attach toskin – and are not just bracelets, watches, or eyewear.

Carbon nanotubes represent a new class of semiconductor materials that consist of single atomicsheets of carbon rolled up into a tube.

The carbon nanotubes form the core of a transistor device whose superior electrical propertiespromise several generations of technology scaling beyond the physical limits of silicon.

Electrons in carbon transistors can move more easily than in silicon-based devices, and theultra-thin body of carbon nanotubes provide additional advantages at the atomic scale.

Inside a chip, contacts are the valves that control the flow of electrons from metal into the channelsof a semiconductor.

As transistors shrink in size, electrical resistance increases within the contacts, which impedesperformance.

Until now, decreasing the size of the contacts on a device caused a commensurate drop inperformance – a challenge facing both silicon and carbon nanotube transistor technologies.

IBM researchers had to forego traditional contact schemes and invented a metallurgical processakin to microscopic welding that chemically binds the metal atoms to the carbon atoms at the endsof nanotubes.

This ‘end-bonded contact scheme’ allows the contacts to be shrunken down to below 10nanometers without deteriorating performance of the carbon nanotube devices.

“For any advanced transistor technology, the increase in contact resistance due to the decrease inthe size of transistors becomes a major performance bottleneck,” Gil added.

“Our novel approach is to make the contact from the end of the carbon nanotube, which we showdoes not degrade device performance.

'This brings us a step closer to the goal of a carbon nanotube technology within the decade.”

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ibm reveals carbon nanotube transistors that could ......90% of americans: eccentric tech...

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