Artificium Future: Emerging Technologies for Moores Law

Gordon Earle Moore - Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation

Moores Law coined by Calvin Mead at Caltech in 1970 essentially says some day soon were going to hit a wall, was again originally described by Gordon E Moore in 1965. Essentially the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. some say it is already hear with the ability to purchase a computer with 2 chips instead of one, obviously the performances available on one chip such as processing speed, memory capacity, sensors, heat dissipation, etc. is no longer feasible, you need 2 chips for todays video hungry gamers.

So the issue is that Silicon used as the semiconductor etched at the smaller and smaller levels, were currently at about 50nanometers, one nanometer is pretty close. Density at minimum cost per transistor is the goal you get into high cost when were at this level so it makes financial (market) sense to stop.

Compound this and everyother aspect of computing that is demanding higher and more performance at just about every level, power, storage space, pixels etc. somethings got to give.

The emerging technology will emerge from somewhere, right now the University and Semiconductor laboratories have their technology enthusiasts speaking with other start-ups, Proffessors, and other enthusiasts looking for the cure.

This is a textbook example of Pain, which will follow with a handful of spin offs, spin ins, and start ups lining up to take a shot at replacing the semiconductor silicon.

So who are the contenders, well the short list actually comes from..... Carbon Nanotubes.....Graphene.... and....Molybdenite. All have been around since the dawn of mankind.

Carbon Nanotubes first published in 1952 by Russians L. V. Radushkevich and V. M. Lukyanovich, then brought back to life by

Sumio Iijima NEC - often credited with the discovery, actually identified the double walled carbon nanotube.

Issues that are preventing immediate (1-3 year) adoption
#1 - they are small tubes (think stack of needles) allignment, and allignment is something of an issue here.
#2 - properties, some of these needles turn metallic, some stay carbon, so you cant have that in a semiconductor wafer for obvious reasons.
#3 - COST - these are grown on CVD machines.

Im sure people are addressing the above issues somehere, and even if they do, then Mr. Pragmatic Buyer is going to insist that someone else buy this experiment before he sets up a line on his floor for implementation.

Graphene - Even better than Carbon Nanotubes, a very nice conductor.
Discovered in 1918 by V. Kohlschütter and P. Haenni

Brought back to life with a couple of 2010 Nobel wins for Russians Andre Konstantin Geim, and Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov, the "discovery", just like everyother "discovery" someone else claims the glory for bringing an old paper out of the dust...but on to Graphene. They used a piece of scotch tape (seriously) to apply the graphene for their experimentation...

Graphene basically the same issues as above, a pragmatists nightmare to get this to work, although there is no stack of tubes issues, the growth and how to etch are major hudles.

ENTER - Molybdenite via the Swiss Andre Kis and colleagues of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Feb 2011 they announced that Molybdenite can be made into smaller transistors, 1.8eV band gap, and transmit 100,000 times better than Silicon, the Graphene guys were close, back in 2005 they had Molybdenite on their sticky tape as well, but they put it down.

My hats off to Andre Kis, and see you at the Nobel awards soon....Molybdenite, is etchable, fast, and feasible, so more importantly this looks like the next phase in semiconductors.