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The 0.34 nm gate-length side-wall monolayer MoS2 transistor device structure and characterization. Credit: Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04323-3A team of researchers working at Tsinghua University in China has created a sub-1-nm gate in a MoS2 transistor. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group outlines how they created the super tiny gate and explains why they believe it will be difficult for anyone to beat their record. For most of the history of microcomputing, Moore's Law has held up—researchers and engineers have managed to double the speed and capability of computers regularly by reducing the size of their components....

The researchers created the tiny transistor by simultaneously applying a force and low voltage which heated a carbon nanotube made up of few layers until outer tube shells separate, leaving just a single-layer nanotube. The heat and strain then changed the "chilarity" of the nanotube, meaning the pattern in which the carbon atoms joined together to form the single-atomic layer of the nanotube wall was rearranged. The result of the new structure connecting the carbon atoms was that the nanotube was transformed into a transistor. Professor Golberg's team members from the National University of Science and Technology in Moscow created...

Most next generation wireless communication technologies require integrated radiofrequency devices that can operate at frequencies greater than 90 GHz. Two of the semiconductors most widely used to fabricate radiofrequency devices are silicon complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) field-effect transistors (FETs) and transistors based on III-V compound semiconductors, particularly GaAs. Both these semiconductor RF technologies, however, are unable to simultaneously achieve high operating frequencies and be easy to integrate within wireless communication technologies. A promising candidate for the development of high-speed FETs (up to terahertz frequencies) are semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNTs), due to their favorable electronic and physical properties. Remarkably, the material...

Using carbon nanotubes, the Goddard team – which is led by Dr. Theodor Kostiuk of NASA’s Planetary Systems Laboratory and Solar System Exploration Division – have created a revolutionary new type of telescope mirror. These mirrors will be deployed as part of a CubeSat, one which may represent a new breed of low-cost, highly effective space-based telescopes. This latest innovation also takes advantage of another field that has seen a lot of development of late. CubeSats, like other small satellites, have been playing an increasingly important role in recent years. Unlike the larger, bulkier satellites of yesteryear, miniature satellites are...

There are no hospitals in space. The closest E.R. is back on Earth, and astronauts can't exactly jump in a cab to get there. So what happens if the sun burps out a massive blast of radiation while an astronaut is space-amblin' by? The NASA Biocapsule—made of carbon nanotubes—will be able to "diagnose" and instantly treat an astronaut without him or her even knowing there's something amiss. It would be like having your own personal Dr. McCoy—implanted under your skin. It represents one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of medicine, and yes, it'll work on Earth, too....

A way of controllably shrinking carbon nanotubes has been developed by US researchers. They say the technique could someday be used to make faster computers and other novel electronic devices. Carbon nanotubes have been used to make a variety of different nanoscale electronic devices, including sensors and transistors. These can outperform conventional components, working at higher frequencies and sensitivities, thanks to the novel physical and electronic properties of nanotubes. These properties, however, depend strongly on the dimensions of each tube. And, until now, there has been no reliable way to make nanotubes to order. This means "nanotube device fabrication is...

Stanford researchers' new etching method shows promise for bulk manufacturing of nanotube-electronics. Semiconducting carbon nanotubes could be the centerpiece of low-power, ultra-fast electronics of the future. The challenge is getting them to work with today's manufacturing processes. Now researchers at Stanford University have made an important advance toward large-scale nanotube electronics. They have created functional transistors using an etching process that can be integrated with the methods used to carve out silicon-based computer chips. A major roadblock to making carbon-nanotube transistors has been the difficulty of separating semiconducting tubes from a typical batch of nanotubes, in which about a third...

Big Blue researchers’ feat suggests the material could be a candidate to replace silicon in chips. IBM researchers have achieved a milestone by creating an integrated circuit out of a single carbon nanotube, a feat that makes the material a likely candidate to replace silicon as the main ingredient for making chips. Big Blue plans to detail the accomplishment in the journal Science on Friday. Long thought to be a good candidate for replacing silicon, carbon nanotube has posed great challenges for scientists who try to coax transistors out of the material and create an integrated circuit (IC). ICs are...

Nanotube ultracapacitors promise the first economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in 200 years February 14, 2006 Almost everything we use requires electrical storage via a battery - computers, cell phones, cars, personal entertainment devices and much more – and as compelling functionality has increased in the digital age, so too has our reliance on the traditional battery which has changed little since it was developed by Alessandro Volta in 1800. Now, work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than...

In conventional CRT TVs, an electron gun fires electrons at a phosphor-coated glass divided into pinpoints to create images. The electrons, however, need to disperse in a large vacuum, which is why TV tubes are so large and bulky. In so-called field emission display (FED) TVs, electrons get filtered into an array of thousands of tips only a few nanometers wide, which then deliver electrons to illuminate the screen. As a result, these TVs can be thin, like LCDs or plasmas. Another advantage comes in cost. The tips, whether nanotubes or diamonds or some other material, in a FED...

They're soft, strong, and very, very long. Large, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes can now be produced at lightning speed. The new technique should allow the nanotubes to be used in commercial devices from heated car windows to flexible television screens. "Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple that rapid commercialization seems possible," says Ray Baughman, a chemist from the University of Texas at Dallas, whose team unveils the ribbon in this week's Science1. Nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms measuring just billionths of a metre across. They are light, strong, and conductive. But for years their promise...

Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have created a new type of nanotube built of gold, silver and nanoparticles. Among the unique aspects of the tubes are their optical and electrical properties, which depend on the tubes’ components, and as such, may form the basis for future nanosensors, catalysts and chemistry-on-a-chip systems. Nanotubes are tiny cylinder-shaped structures (a nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter). Discovered in 1991, the first nanotubes were made of carbon and captured the attention of scientists worldwide when they proved to be the strongest material ever made (100 times stronger than steel), as well as being...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp. said on Thursday it used microscopic carbon molecules to emit light -- a breakthrough some scientists say might one day make faster and smaller computers. In the quest for ever-smaller computing devices, researchers are seeking to replace silicon as the foundation for chips. Researchers at IBM have been studying tiny carbon nanotubes -- molecules resembling rolls of chicken wire that are 50,000 times narrower than a human hair. By engineering the carbon nanotube, IBM said it was able to not only conduct current, but to create light that could someday be used...