Technological breakthrough production of carbon chip series

Researchers at IBM Corp. have developed a new technique for mass-producing carbon nanotubes, which can produce smaller, much faster chips.

Scientists have unveiled a carbon chip with more than 10,000 transistors made from carbon nanotubes. New technology will someday replace silicon in computer chips.

Thanks to rapid innovation over the past four decades, silicon microprocessor technology has consistently shrunk in size and improved efficiency, thereby boosting the information technology revolution. Smaller sizes, however, have now reached nanoscale, which has reached the limits of performance due to the nature of silicon and the laws of physics.

The electrons in transistors can move more easily than silicon devices that allow for fast data transfer. According to the team, the nanotubes are ideally formed for transistors at the atomic level, an advantage over silicon.

Supratik Guha, director of physical science at IBM, says they are trying the first steps toward technology by producing carbon nanotubes transistors in a conventional semiconductor production infrastructure.

The motivation for studying carbon nanotube transistors is because at nanoscale they are much more efficient than transistors made of any other material. But, the challenges that need to be addressed are the very high purity of carbon nanotubes and the calculated position at nanoscale. Researchers have made great strides in addressing both challenges.

The new technique paves the way for the production of large numbers of carbon nanotube transistors at predetermined surface locations.