20 February 2009
Pushing nanotechnology to the limit
Two US research teams are taking nanotechnology to the limit, with one developing transistors a fraction of the size of those used on chips and another working on a film material capable of storing data from 250 dvds onto a surface the size of a coin.
Jeremy Levy from the University of Pittsburgh explained: “We have demonstrated that we can make important technologies that are significantly smaller than existing devices.”
Levy’s team created its nanotech transistors using two ceramic crystal materials – lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate. When sandwiched together, the insulators conduct electricity when a positive charge is passed across them. Using the tip of an atomic force microscope, a voltage was applied to etch a tiny conducting wire between the two materials, which can later be erased by reversing the charge. According to Levy, the transistor is the smallest ever produced and the same materials can be used to make atom sized transistors for computers, memory devices and sensors.
A thin semiconductor film has also been developed by researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherts and the University of California Berkely. Although polymers have been used before when creating sheets, the material can lose its structure when spread over large surfaces. The new method involves heating sapphire crystals to create a specific pattern of ridges on a surface. This serves as a guide for the semiconductor film. The technology could result in arrays of semiconductor material that are almost 15 times denser than anything achieved previously.
Author
Chris Shaw
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