Researchers have achieved an "unprecedented feat" by building a simple computer using carbon nanotubes, which have caused many scientists' headaches over the past 15 years.
The discovery brought us one step closer to mastering the potentially-useful material, a Stanford University press release reported.
"People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics moving beyond silicon," research leader Subhasish Mitra, an electrical engineer and computer scientist and Chambers Faculty Scholar of Engineering, said. "But there have been few demonstrations of complete digital systems using this exciting technology. Here is the proof."
Researchers believe the nanotubes could one day help replace the silicon chip, which has almost hit its technological limit.
"Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have long been considered as a potential successor to the silicon transistor," Professor Jan Rabaey, a world expert on electronic circuits and systems at UC Berkeley, said.
Researcher have doubted in the past that CNTs would ever be able to reach that goal.
"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," Rabaey said.
Professor Giovanni De Micheli, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, said the Stanford team made two important contributions to the world of CNT technology.
"First, they put in place a process for fabricating CNT-based circuits. Second, they built a simple but effective circuit that shows that computation is doable using CNTs," he said.
CNTs were first used in transistors ("the on-off switches at the heart of digital electronic systems") 15 years ago. Manufacturers always want smaller transistors so more can be fit on one chip. The smaller the transistor the more energy it wastes and the more heat it gives off.
"Energy dissipation of silicon-based systems has been a major concern," said Anatha Chandrakasan, head of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and a world leader in chip research, said.
CNTs are composed of long carbon chains, which are exceptional at "conducting and controlling" electricity. It would take very little energy to switch them from on to off, and they are so tiny that thousands could fit inside a single human hair.
"CNTs could take us at least an order of magnitude in performance beyond where you can project silicon could take us," another study leader H.S. Phillip Wong, said.
