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IBM scientists have developed breakthrough transistor technology that could allow production of a new class of smaller, faster and lower power computer chips than currently possible with silicon.
The researchers are reported as having built the world's first transistors out of carbon nanotubes.
These are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms that measure as small as 10 atoms across and are 500 times smaller than silicon-based transistors.
The breakthrough is a new batch process for forming large numbers of nanotube transistors.
Until now, nanotubes had to be positioned one at a time or by random chance, which while fine for scientific experiments is impossibly slow and tedious for mass production.
The reports suggested that the IBM achievement is an important step in finding new materials and processes for improving computer chips after silicon-based chips cannot be made any smaller.
"This is a major step forward in our pursuit to build molecular-scale electronic devices," said Phaedon Avouris, lead researcher on the project and manager of IBMÂ’s Nanoscale Science Research Department.
He added, "Our studies prove that carbon nanotubes can compete with silicon in terms of performance and since they allow transistors to be made much smalelr, they are promising candidates for a future nonelectronic technology."
He said the new process gives them a practical way of making nanotube transistors which is essential for future mass production.
Depending on their size and shape, the electronic properties of carbon can be metallic or semiconducting.
The problems scientists had faced in using carbon nanotubes as transistors was that all synthetic methods of production yield a mixture of metallic and semi-conducting nanotubes which "stick together" to forms ropes or bundles.
This compromises their usefulness because only semi-conducting nanotubes can be used as transistors and when they are stuck together, the metallic nanotubes overpower the semi-conducting nanotubes. Up to now there has been no practical way to separate them.
The IBM team overcame this with "constructive destruction," a technique that allows scientists to produce only semi-conducting carbon nanotubes where desired and with the electrical properties required to build computer chips.
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