Nanotechnology and Tinier Transistors Result Extraordinary Performance

As an alternative for silicon-based transistors, the usage of anatomically thin materials looks promising, as it has been revealed through researches that scientists are able to connect these nanotechnology chips with more efficiency as compared to previous models.  The Moore’s Law, which is also a famous possible prediction that the number of transistors that can be placed tightly with each other onto a small-sized microchip will most likely double in the amount in every few coming years as nanotechnology advances throughout the world, bumping the imitations of basic physics.

Innovation in nanotechnology

Although these physical limitations could also halt down the progress of the past several decades unless a new and innovative approach comes to light. Currently, a new direction is being explored inside nanotechnology, which includes the usage of anatomically thin sized materials instead of the usually used silicon as the basis of the formation of new transistors, although the difficult process has proven to be its connection of 2D material with the other electronical components.

Currently, the researchers working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with the University of California and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, have been able to find out several new ways by which they would be able to properly manage to connect the conventional electronic components, which would be able to help in unlocking the massive potential for 2D materials, along with further miniaturization of the required components that are to be used to a certain extent which would possible extend the Moore’s Law, for some time in the near future, helping in the advancement of nanotechnology.

These findings had been published in the journal named Nature, which includes a paper which has been written by several of the graduates from UC Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other educational institutes.

Massive reduction in size

The researchers were able to resolve one of the largest concerning issues in the miniaturization of these semiconductor devices using nanotechnology, the resistance during contact between the monolayer material semiconductor and a metal electrode.

The solution has proven to be very simple in this, the usage of semimetal material, the element bismuth, in place of ordinary metallic material for connection with the monolayer material.

Such monolayer of ultrathin material developed through nanotechnology innovations, which in this case is the usage of molybdenum disulfide, which is also seen as a large contender to find a way around the limitation surround the miniaturization process, which is now being encountered by the technology used in the development of transistors based on silicon material.

Although the process of creating an effective and highly conductive interface between these materials along with metal conductors using the nanotechnology, for connecting them with each other and various other electronic devices or sources for power, had been a challenging task that held back their progression towards forming a solution.

The interface between the material of semiconductor and metal produces the phenomenon which is called the metal-induced gap state, which further leads toward the formation of the Schottky barrier, which helps in inhibiting the charge flow in the carriers. The usage of a semi-metallic material, as its properties lie between semiconductors and metals, when combined with a properly placed alignment of energy between both materials, has turned out to solve the problematic issue.

One of the researchers explained that the escalated pace of the process of miniaturization of transistors that are using in the making of computers processors and microchips used for storage of memory has stalled out previously in the year 2000, and kept until a new three-dimensional transistor architecture was allowed to be developed using nanotechnology, which would then be used in semiconductor devices. The current situation being experienced is similar to then, as nanotechnology is still stuck at a bottleneck.

The advancements in the current nanotechnology have helped in the formation of a two-dimensional material that is only thick of about only one or two sheets of the atom and has been able to meet all the requirements to be further miniaturized, thus helping in the overall reduction of the size of the upcoming transistors.

This would, in the future, help potentially reduce the size several times more than it currently is of the channel length, which is a key parameter in it. The nanotechnology would allow the previous size of channel length, which is around 5 to 10 nm, to a sub-nanometer scale.

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