Skip to main content

Linking hydrogen atom to silicon surface: A new way for greener, smaller and faster electronics

A key step in unlocking the potential for greener, faster, smaller electronic circuitry was taken recently by a group of researchers led by UAlberta physicist Robert Wolkow.
The research team found a way to delete and replace out-of-place atoms that had been preventing new revolutionary circuitry designs from working. This unleashes a new kind of silicon chips for used in common electronic products, such as our phones and computers.
"For the first time, we can unleash the powerful properties inherent to the atomic scale," explained Wolkow, noting that printing errors on silicon chips are inevitable when working at the atomic scale. "We were making things that were close to perfect but not quite there. Now that we have the ability to make corrections, we can ensure perfect patterns, and that makes the circuits work. It is this new ability to edit at the atom scale that makes all the difference."
Think of a typing mistake and the ability to go back and white it out and type it again perfectly. Now imagine that the white out is actually single hydrogen atoms, allowing a level of precision previously unattainable.
"We can precisely erase any errors and reprint that atom in the correct place. It's not even a compromise like white out where you either have a gooey layer or indentation. It's actually perfect," said Wolkow, who worked with fellow scientists from the University of Alberta, the National Research Council, and Quantum Silicon Inc.
Scientists have seen many hints that atomic circuitry was within reach. However, the necessary precision was previously possible only for simple materials that had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures, impractical for everyday applications demanded in computers and personal digital devices. Wolkow and his team have discovered methods and material to ensure stability at room temperature, challenges that he and other scientists the world over have been working for decades on overcoming.
Wolkow's graduate students Roshan Achal and Taleana Huff together with postdoc Moe Rashidi showed they can overcome these obstacles with a modified approach to the same silicon chips that are used in today's circuitry. While they had previously improved accuracy of atomic silicon printing, errors in the form of misplaced atoms always occurred at the one percent level. Though the placement errors were small -- about one third of a nanometer -- they nevertheless large enough to upset circuit operation.
The students created a reliable procedure for picking up single hydrogen atoms with their atomically sharp probe and replacing one or more hydrogen atoms to perfectly erase atomic misprints.
With their new discovery, many remaining challenges to ultra-low power atomic circuitry have also been erased. Wolkow, Achal, and Huff's discovery has been captured in the academic paper "Atomic Whiteout," appearing in the scientific journal ACS Nano.

Journal Reference:

  1. Taleana R. Huff, Hatem Labidi, Mohammad Rashidi, Mohammad Koleini, Roshan Achal, Mark H. Salomons, Robert A. Wolkow. Atomic White-Out: Enabling Atomic Circuitry through Mechanically Induced Bonding of Single Hydrogen Atoms to a Silicon Surface. ACS Nano, 2017; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b04238

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nano thin film Barium Stannate :New revolution to electronics and solar industry

A team of researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, have discovered a new nano-scale thin film material with the highest-ever conductivity in its class. The new material could lead to smaller, faster, and more powerful electronics, as well as more efficient solar cells. The discovery is being published today in  Nature Communications , an open access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences. Researchers say that what makes this new material so unique is that it has a high conductivity, which helps electronics conduct more electricity and become more powerful. But the material also has a wide bandgap, which means light can easily pass through the material making it optically transparent. In most cases, materials with wide bandgap, usually have either low conductivity or poor transparency. "The high conductivity and wide bandgap make this an ideal material for making optically transparent conducting films which could be used...
Post a Comment
Read more

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs): a new revolution to quantum technologies

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are layered semiconductors that can be exfoliated into layers only a few atoms thick. Recent research has shown that some TMDs can contain quantum light sources that can emit single photons of light. Until now, the occurrence of these quantum light emitters has been random. Now, researchers in the Graphene Flagship working at the University of Cambridge, UK, have created large scale arrays of these quantum emitters in different TMD materials. The work, also involving researchers from Harvard University, US, is published in  Nature Communications . This new approach leads to large quantities of on-demand, single photon emitters, paving the way for integrating ultra-thin, single photons in electronic devices. Quantum light emitters, or quantum dots, are of interest for many different applications, including quantum communication and networks. Until now, it has been very difficult to produce large arrays of quantum emitters close together w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nano Thermal Mechanical Rectification : A New way to harness heat to power computer

One of the biggest problems with computers, dating to the invention of the first one, has been finding ways to keep them cool so that they don't overheat or shut down . Instead of combating the heat, two University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineers have embraced it as an alternative energy source that would allow computing at ultra-high temperatures. Sidy Ndao, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, said his research group's development of a nano-thermal-mechanical device, or thermal diode, came after flipping around the question of how to better cool computers. "If you think about it, whatever you do with electricity you should (also) be able to do with heat, because they are similar in many ways," Ndao said. "In principle, they are both energy carriers. If you could control heat, you could use it to do computing and avoid the problem of overheating." A paper Ndao co-authored with Mahmoud Elzouka, a graduate student in mechanica...
Post a Comment
Read more