Nanotechnology/Nanoelectronics

Nanoelectronics is expected to be cheaper to fabricatethan silicon / gallium / arsenic based electronics. It alsomight be small enough to not require a power source as itis possible to abstract a small amount of energy from thesurrounding heat by a molecular level energy scavengingsystem[1]

Coulomb Blockade

Coulomb Blockade

Tunnel Junctions Quantum Tunneling

Using molecules for electronics, often called moletronicsor molecular electronics [2] , is a new technology whichis still in its infancy, but also brings hope for truly atomicscale electronic systems in the future.One of the more promising applications of molecularelectronics was proposed by the IBM researcher Ari Avi-ram and the theoretical chemist Mark Ratner in their1974 and 1988 papers Molecules for Memory, Logic andAmplication, (see Unimolecular rectier ) [3] [4] . Thisis one of many possible ways in which a molecular leveldiode / transistor might be synthesized by organic chem-istry. A model system was proposed with a spiro carbonstructure giving a molecular diode about half a nanome-tre across which could be connected by polythiophenemolecular wires. Theoretical calculations showed the de-sign to be sound in principle and there is still hope thatsuch a system can be made to work.However one researcher, experimentalist Jan HendrikSchn, could not wait for the necessary technical progressand at a time when he was publishing one scientic papera week and winning scholarships, heading for the top innanotechnology, it was discovered he had fabricated boththe experiment where such a device worked and severalother potentially important milestones in the eld. Thisincident is discussed byDavidGoodstein in PhysicsWorld. However it seems only a matter of time before some-thing like this proposed elegant solution to the problemdemonstrates the behavior of a diode.A quantum computer would be incredibly fast comparedto microelectronics. It would also be able to use the prop-erties of quantum mechanics to be in fuzzy states whichcould represent many numbers at once allowing a massivedensity of memory. How such devices would be nano-fabricated is however way beyond current technology.

The rst working 2-qubit quantum computer was demon-strated in 1998.In 2006, the rst working 12 qubit quantum computerwas demonstrated.

1 Bibliography Michel le Bellac, A Short Introduction to QuantumInformation and Quantum Computation, CambridgeUniversity Press (2006) ISBN 978-0-521-86056-7.

Michael A. Nielsen and Isaac L. Chuang, QuantumComputation and Quantum Information, CambridgeUniversity Press (2000) ISBN 978-0-521-63235-5.

Keithley.com has some freely available handbookson low noise measurements in electronics and nan-otechnology

Nanoelectronics Overview at Understandingnano

See also notes on editing this book about how to add ref-erences Nanotechnology/About#How_to_contribute.

[1] S. Meininger et al., Vibration-to-Electric Energy Con-version, IEEE Trans. VLSI Systems, 64-76 (2001).

[2] Petty M.C., Bryce M.R. and Bloor D., An Introduction toMolecular Electronics, (Edward Arnold, London, 1995).

[3] A. Aviram and M. A. Ratner, Molecular Rectier(Chemical Physics Letters 29: 277 (1974)).

[4] A. Aviram, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 110 5687-5692 (1988)

1

2 2 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

2 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses2.1 Text

Nanotechnology/Nanoelectronics Source: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Nanotechnology/Nanoelectronics?oldid=1810016 Contributors:DavidCary, Panic2k4, Darklama, KristianMolhave, MartinY, Getu~enwikibooks, Xlt76 and Anonymous: 2

2.2 Images

2.3 Content license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0

BibliographyText and image sources, contributors, and licensesTextImagesContent license