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Intel To Serve Up Metal Chips
News Currently, the gate, which controls whether a transistor is on or off, is made of silicon atoms while the gate dielectric, an insulating layer below the gate, is made of silicon dioxide. The gate dielectric on chips coming out of Intel’s fabs next...
[November 5, 2003, 7:50]
Intel Researches Nanotubes For Chip Designs
News The electrons carom off the metal atoms. Some nanotubes are semiconductors, meaning the transmission of electrons can be controlled, while others are pure conductors, depending on the arrangement of the atoms.
[November 13, 2006, 10:59]
Will Intel Smash The Silicon Barrier?
News This rearranges the atoms in such a way that electrons can move through them more easily, increasing speed or reducing losses depending on which is more useful in a particular application. However, it stayed at 1.2nm in 2004 with 65nm processes...
[March 1, 2005, 16:10]
Nanoparticle Research Blows Open New Possibilities
News The San Diego-based start-up has created a manufacturing process for producing small, stable metallic particles that consist of only a few atoms. By reducing the number of atoms per particle, manufacturers can better exploit the inherent properties...
[October 22, 2004, 12:15]
Strained Silicon Speeds AMD's Chips
News Strained silicon is a design technique in which silicon atoms are forcibly pulled apart from each other. With the atoms spaced out further from one other, electrons can move more rapidly, similar to how a hockey puck can zip faster across a rink...
[August 20, 2004, 8:50]
Gate Dielectric Scaling For High-Performance CMOS: From SiO2 To High-K
White Papers However, continual gate dielectric scaling will require high-K, as SiO2 will eventually run out of atoms for further scaling. This paper will present results on the 0.8nm SiO2 and very high-performance PMOS and NMOS transistors with high-K/metal...
[November 7, 2007, 0:00]
The Future Is Very, Very Small, Say Intel
News The properties of nanotubes change with how the atoms are arranged, even though they're all made of carbon. Transistors will consist of only a few atoms, making it impossible to shrink them further. CMOS, which stands for complementary metal oxide...
[October 25, 2004, 16:55]
IBM Combination Technique Speeds PC Chips
News Some structures inside cutting-edge transistors are only a few atoms thick. The concept -- which involves embedding a layer of silicon and large germanium atoms deep into the wafer to spread out pure silicon layers above it -- was initially...
[September 9, 2003, 16:55]
Researchers, Literally, Catch Some Rays
News The light, composed of particles called photons, essentially lost its zing as the information from the photons was transferred into the spin inherent in the gas atoms. Lloyd said that one of the hardest things in quantum computing is the transfer...
[January 22, 2001, 8:33]
Moore Has Trouble Seeing Past Silicon
News Designers have been able to put more transistors on chips for decades by shrinking the size of the transistors, but they are now at the point where some structures inside chips are only a few atoms thick.
[March 10, 2005, 8:30]
Pencil + Sticky Tape = Desktop Supercollider + Post-silicon Processors
Blog The atomic bonding between sheets is relatively weak compared to that between the atoms in each sheet, meaning it's easy for sheets to slip apart - which is why pencils leave such excellent skidmarks on paper.
[November 6, 2007, 9:15]
AMD Strains For Processor Improvements
News Strained silicon involves physically stretching the silicon atoms apart from one another on select chip layers so electrons can travel more freely and rapidly. Stretching is accomplished by inserting relatively large germanium atoms into layers of...
[June 12, 2003, 9:03]
IBM Brings Nanotube Revolution Closer
News Under the metal catalyst method, nickel, iron or cobalt is heated with carbon atoms until the metal melts. The new method, detailed in an article in the October issue of Nanoletters, involves using silicon rather than metal as a catalyst in the...
[September 30, 2002, 10:49]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog But it has hidden depths -- if you can call layers just three atoms thick, depths. Ruthenium is not a metal that normally gets tongues wagging. Tuesday 22/05/2001 Atomic number 44, this silvery-grey element stops titanium from tarnishing and...
[May 25, 2001, 17:50]
Nanotube Breakthrough Paves Path For Carbon Chips
News The tubes, which are made up of carbon atoms arranged in a coil that looks like a spool of chicken wire, conduct electricity better than metal, are stronger than steel and can even conduct light. Researchers at Stanford University and the...
[January 8, 2004, 7:50]
Thursday
Blog On the way out of the keynote, I'm handed a keyring containing a small scrap of nanotechnology -- an extreme-ultraviolet reflective mirror made from eighty layers of metal ten or fifteen atoms thick. Thursday 12/09/2002Mere words can't do justice...
[September 13, 2002, 18:02]
HP Introduces New Chip Mould
News HP and Nanolithosolutions say they have a machine that will let semiconductor manufacturers produce chips sporting wires measuring a few atoms wide. The grooves and channels created in the substrate are then filled with metal to make wires.
[May 2, 2007, 10:38]
Graphene - Watch This Space
Blog Graphene is certainly an odd substance - it's a layer of carbon atoms in a hexagonal lattice, just one atom thick. Graphene can be a metal or a semiconductor, it has exceptional heat conductivity (unsurprisingly), and it's creating a veritable...
[March 7, 2007, 20:18]
Nanotubes Set To Take Off
News Single-walled nanotubes -- the kind that CNI manufacturers -- are microscopic spools of carbon atoms that resemble a single coil of chicken wire. In this way, lighter plastic parts could replace metal in certain products.
[September 12, 2003, 12:40]
Celebrating 60 Years Of Transistors
News The structures inside transistors — particularly an insulating layer called the gate oxide — will by that time consist of only a few atoms. Chips now come out of factories with 45nm features, thanks to the introduction of metal gates in transistors...
[December 17, 2007, 7:33]
