IBM repels Moore’s Law by unlocking the secrets of carbon nanotube transistors

With each passing year, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to adhere to Moore’s Law. The transistor valves serving as electron gates cannot shrink any further— the underlying the laws of physics unravel at atomic proportions. But now, IBM’s research division has discovered a major engineering solution that will prolong Moore’s Law another few years: how to replace silicon semiconductors with carbon nanotube transistors.

According to the press release, IBM managed to shrink transistor contacts without inhibiting the efficiency of the carbon nanotube device, allowing for the creation of smaller and faster computer chips that’ll surpass contemporary silicon-based devices, enabling improved big data analysis, broader cloud computing, and boosted battery life in connected devices.

Recall that Moore’s law asserts that the semiconductor industry doubles the number of transistors on the chips every two years, thereby doubling the processing power every two years. While this has remained true for decades, the silicon-based transistors used by the semiconductor industry are very close to reaching the minimum size limited needed to still be able to conduct electricity. By comparison, carbon nanotubes already measure less than 10 nanometer in diameter, less than approximately half the size of contemporary silicon transistors.

Proving that carbon nanotube transistors can successfully function as switches at the nano-scale (widths 10,000 times thinner than human hair) has already been accomplished; that’s not the breakthrough here. The new research’s accomplishment highlights what the company describes as “the other major hurdle in incorporating carbon nanotubes into semiconductor devices,” referring to a new means of attaching the components. More specifically, replacing the electrical leads, that are chemically bonded to the metal substructure, with carbon nanotubes.

“These chip innovations are necessary to meet the emerging demands of cloud computing, Internet of Things and Big Data systems,” said Dario Gil, vice president of Science & Technology at IBM Research. “As technology nears the physical limits of silicon, new materials and circuit architectures must be ready to deliver the advanced technologies that will drive the Cognitive Computing era. This breakthrough shows that computer chips made of carbon nanotubes will be able to power systems of the future sooner than the industry expected.”

The research is part of a $3 billion investment chip R&D made in 2014; IBM remains confident that these recent are crucial in providing the necessary in the next generation of post-silicon chips.

Source: Fastcompany via IBM