Nanotech has been professed as savior of all things human and now it will give us smaller, faster and more powerful computers. Two research teams have developed methods to make transistors that are fraction of the size used today in computer and a film material that stores data equivalent to 250 DVD disc on a surface the size of a quarter using Nanotechnology.
A team at University of Pittsburgh has developed nanotech transistors using two ceramic crystal materials lanthanum aluminate and strontium titanate. Both crystals are insulators but when sandwiched together they conduct electricity across them. The team used a tip of an atomic force microscope to etch a tiny conducting wire between the two materials by applying voltage.
Jeremy Levy of University of Pittsburgh said in an email “The transistor we made is arguably the smallest one that has ever been produced in a deterministic and reliable fashion. And we did it using an instrument that can be miniaturized down to the size of a wristwatch.” He further added that the method could be used to make atom-sized transistors for computers, memory devices and sensors.
This would result in smaller sized computer that are more powerful and energy efficient.
The second team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of California Berkeley has developed a thin semiconductor film using nanotech that self-assembles into an extremely precise, equidistant pattern when spread out on a heated sapphire crystal surface.
“The density achievable with the technology we’ve developed could potentially enable the contents of 250 DVDs to fit onto a surface the size of a quarter,” said Ting Xu, assistant professor at UC Berkeley.
The new technology could make nearly perfect arrays of semiconductor materials that are 15 times denser, resulting in densities of 10 terabits per square inch or 1250GB per square inch.
The new method uses processes already in use in industry and hence it will be very easy to incorporate into production line with little cost. Also the technique is more environmentally friendly than photolithography (used in manufacturing chips), which requires the use of harsh chemicals and acids in manufacturing process.
Both the technologies when combined together can give us computers that are way smaller, very fast and have 100 times more storage in future.
[Via Reuters]