Stanford University scientists have been successful in building a basic computer using carbon nanotubes, which consume less energy but work faster than silicon chips.
Carbon nanotubes are semiconductor materials that are touted to be the future of electronic devices. For years, researchers have been trying to use this material for the betterment of the electronic industry. Researchers from Stanford University took a huge step toward this future by successfully creating the first basic computer using this material. Carbon nanotubes consume less energy and work faster than silicon chips.
"People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon," said Stanford professors Subhasish Mitra, an electrical engineer and computer scientist. "But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof."
In the past experts predicted that silicon chips will soon be incapable of producing smaller, faster, cheaper electronic devices. Hence, finding a successor to this material became imperative. Stanford university researchers have made digital circuits out of nanotubes, which can replace silicon chips in the future.
"Carbon nanotubes [CNTs] have long been considered as a potential successor to the silicon transistor," said Professor Jan Rabaey, a world expert on electronic circuits and systems at the University of California-Berkeley. "There is no question that this will get the attention of researchers in the semiconductor community and entice them to explore how this technology can lead to smaller, more energy-efficient processors in the next decade."
Though it has been 15 years since CNTs were first used in transistors, researchers have been unable to use the material in more complex circuits.
According to Professor Giovanni De Micheli, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, the recent Stanford success has contributed in a big way to the worldwide effort of using CNTs.
Though it could take years to mature, the Stanford approach points toward the possibility of industrial-scale production of carbon nanotube semiconductors, according to Naresh Shanbhag, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The achievement was reported in an article on the cover of the journal Nature