Intel To Serve Up Metal Chips
News We'd love to continue with silicon dioxide, but we can't do it because of leakage," said Ken David, director of components research in Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group. Currently, the gate, which controls whether a transistor is on or off...
[November 5, 2003, 7:50]
Motorola Crystallises Memory Breakthrough
News Flash memory can retain data up to 10 years because the transistor gates -- the microscopic on/off switches inside chips -- are wrapped in a layer of glass, or more technically, silicon dioxide. The silicon dioxide layer, however, is thick and will...
[March 31, 2003, 8:08]
New Insulator Strengthens Future Of Moore's Law
News As the parts get smaller, they reach a point where they no longer perform the function that they are intended to perform -- as the silicon dioxide (SiO2) insulation used in transistors is reduced to a few atomic layers, for example, electrons...
[January 5, 2004, 7:55]
The Future Is Very, Very Small, Say Intel
News These chips will differ from existing chips in part because the transistor gate will be made of metal rather than silicon, while the "gate oxide" -- an insulating layer that controls the flow of electrons inside the transistor -- will be made out...
[October 25, 2004, 16:55]
Intel's Two-way Punch Knocks Out 45nm Chips
News To date, the insulating layer between the gate and the rest of the transistor has been made from silicon dioxide. To solve this problem, chip companies have long looked to new materials to replace silicon dioxide as the insulator.
[January 30, 2007, 14:33]
Microsoft Vs. Google: Who's Greener?
News Microsoft also has agreed to promote carbon-dioxide emission reduction among individual employees as part of the Cool It campaign, which helps people calculate their lifestyle's carbon dioxide emissions, Van Velsor said.
[June 6, 2006, 15:40]
Will Intel Smash The Silicon Barrier?
News Traditionally, this layer’s been made out of silicon dioxide: by replacing it with another material called a high-K dielectric, the layer can be physically thicker but act electrically as if it was much thinner.
[March 1, 2005, 16:10]
AMD Reveals Futuristic Transistor Designs
News Transistors use silicon dioxide gates, diminutive structures that are part of the equipment responsible for controlling the flow of electrons inside chips. The chipmaker's researchers have created and demonstrated a new Fully Depleted Silicon-on...
[April 3, 2003, 7:48]
Bell Labs Finds End Of The Road For Transistors
News The transistor is made from gold electrodes, a silicon dioxide layer and thiol molecules, which are carbon compounds similar to alcohols but with the oxygen replaced by sulphur. First applications are likely to be in devices like active paper...
[October 18, 2001, 15:34]
Intel Terahertz Transistor Breaks Speed Limits
News The terahertz transistor design -- a terahertz is a thousand gigahertz, or one trillion cycles a second -- is an evolution of current designs, using new materials such as zirconium dioxide. Smaller transistors go faster but also leak more current...
[November 26, 2001, 9:06]
Dell Runs Out Of...glass?
Blog Comment There's no plastic on earth that can cope with that sort of regime - only extremely special glass (which is, after all, silicon dioxide). That's because LCDs are made like silicon chips - they're dunked in acid, heated up to hundreds of degrees in...
[October 12, 2007, 18:06]
Start-up Redesigns Fuel Cells
News The byproducts of the reaction eventually recombine with the electrons to form water and carbon dioxide. A start-up company says it has developed a way to make fuel cells out of silicon, a change that potentially could increase the performance of...
[February 11, 2003, 8:29]
Spansion Sees Profits In Flash Memory's Future
News The memory cells in conventional floating-gate flash consist of a sandwich of materials: polysilicon is encased between two layers of silicon dioxide, or glass. A lot of companies have proposed future technologies to lead the flash memory market.
[November 29, 2007, 14:05]
VIA Debuts 'carbon-neutral' Chip
News The company is going a step further, however, in promising to fund regional energy conservation, reforestation and alternative energy projects to offset the carbon dioxide produced over the life of the chip.
[September 13, 2006, 18:25]
Rupert Goodwins' Diary
Blog Talking of breathing, like most animals I create quite a lot of carbon dioxide. So instead of creating loads and loads of silicon cores running at a few GHz and a meagre 100°C, we need a few absolutely incandescent devices throbbing away at...
[February 3, 2006, 16:55]
Emerging Mobile Tech To Watch Out For
News G24 make nanotechnology-based flexible solar cells out of titanium and titanium dioxide, which are packaged into mobile-phone chargers like this one. CSR — aka Cambridge Silicon Radio — shows off its eGPS technology.
[February 12, 2008, 11:31]
Memristor - Everything Changes
Blog Titanium dioxide is a poor conductor of electricity, with one interesting twist: it changes its conductivity when it encounters oxygen - in fact, it's used in oxygen detectors. Take a chunk of titanium dioxide - which has a crystal structure based...
[May 8, 2008, 18:33]
The Technological Singularity
Blog Comment The answer to controlling AI beings from replicating or improving themselves would be to keep them out of the semiconductor foundries, sand pits (silicon dioxide becomes feedstock for the foundries), metal mines (gold, silver, aluminum, copper...
[December 2, 2008, 2:39]
