Nanotechnology set to transform electronics

Denser hard drives, smaller and faster chips, and better optical switches are just some of the advances likely to result from the growing synergy of nanotechnology with electronics and computing.

Denser hard drives, smaller and faster chips, and better optical switches are just some of the advances likely to result from the growing synergy of nanotechnology with electronics and computing.

By 2015, electronics and computing are forecast to contribute an impressive $300 billion per year to the total market revenues for nanotech-enabled products and services, which is estimated to surpass $1 trillion.

The immense potential of carbon nanotubes offers the prospect of multisectoral applicability.

Nanoscale dimensions - often 50,000 times thinner than a strand of hair - allied with attributes of remarkable flexibility, resilience, chirality, high thermal and electrical conductivity as well as strength are likely to support their commercial deployment in electronics and microelectronics, fibre optics, avionics, superconductors, telecomms, lubricants and coatings industries.

Transistors built from carbon nanotubes and capable of consistently outperforming comparable silicon transistors constitute another research milestone.

"This may be a precursor of a time when carbon nanotubes become the building blocks of computing", notes Girish Solanki, Research Analyst at Technical Insights, a division of Frost and Sullivan.

"Existing silicon-based technology's potential to fabricate smaller and faster chips will plateau before 2015 and this is where nanotech may make the difference", he adds.

Breakthroughs in molecular electronics and memory are now pushing the limits of computer technology beyond silicon.

Particular attention is being focused on spintronics, with spin-based computing set to realise practical application in the long term.

Ultra-efficient blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) with high brightness, low power consumption, and significant ESD resistance are likely to be deployed in the automotive sector.

Similarly, white LEDs are likely to find use in portable electronic devices that require low battery consumption such as displays on cellular telephones, camcorders and PDAs.

Nanobatteries are expected to improve the capabilities of cell phones and other portable electronics that use lithium-ion batteries.

Here, nano-sized particles are set to boost power storage and production as lithium ions will have a smaller distance to travel during diffusion.

These micro-batteries are expected to find use in powering tiny pumps or presses in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMs) devices.

All-organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs), which can be used to craft exceedingly slender TVs or computer screens and possess the same brightness as liquid crystal displays (LCDs), are used in commercial electronic devices.

Efforts are now being made to develop complementary quantum-dot organic light-emitting devices (QD-OLEDs) that are stable, easy to manufacture, flat, and exhibit a high-resolution display that consumes minimal power.

Other interesting R and D initiatives relate to nanometer scale antennas and compact nanolasers.

Nanoscale antennas have the capacity to significantly augment the accuracy of medical diagnostic imaging and devices that detect chemical and biological warfare agents.

Compact nanolasers with the ability to be integrated into silicon microchips with a diameter of just a hundred millionths of a millimetre, hold out the prospect of devices that would make information technology more compressed and rapid.

As the data storage sector verges on the superparamagnetic threshold - the limit beyond which magnetic storage becomes unstable - there is growing demand for workable nanotechnology alternatives.

Here, nanotech organic films are being envisaged as the data storage medium of the future.

Information will be written, read, and stored in collections of molecules within the low-cost films, with MEM probe devices used to perform the reading and writing functions.

Moreover, nanoscale magnetic sensors are expected to enhance the storage capacity of hard disk drives by a factor of a thousand.

They are also being developed for biomedical applications.

Hectic activity in the electronics arena is being matched by nanotech R and D efforts targeting computational applications.

Rapid strides are being made to combat the negative effects of decoherence, to construct suitable hardware architecture for designing a quantum computer, and to explore quantum algorithms to exploit the immense computing power present in these devices.

"The future of quantum computer hardware architecture is likely to be very different from what we know today.

In time, quantum computers will emerge as the superior computational devices at the very least, and perhaps will one day make today's computer appear archaic", notes Solanki.

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