Associate Professor
Department of Electrical Comunication Engineering

Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore

Moore’s law was stated fifty years ago. This means that today, the number of components present on an Integrated Circuit Chip (IC Chip) is 2²⁵ times of what it was in 1965. To pack so many components on a very small area of space, the components must be made very, very small. So far, Moore’s law has been upheld, but now technology is lagging behind the prediction.

Established methods like the traditional CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) architecture are reaching physical and technological barriers that cannot be overcome. Researchers therefore have been looking for new technology, very different from the existing one that can push the limits further; and they might have found an answer in nanotechnology, or more specifically, nanoelectronics.

Nanoelectronics is the field dealing with electronic components of sizes in the order of 10^-9 m, a hundred thousandth the size of a human hair. By making components this small, it becomes possible to further increase the functionality, efficiency and power of electronic devices by a thousand times without increasing their bulk. This decrease of size of components to increase the number of components on a chip is called ‘Scaling’.

Nanoelectronics is a highly interdisciplinary field, with scaling requiring a knowledge of physics, fabrication requiring material science and chemistry, and creation of an IC Chip and its architecture to match a certain purpose requiring circuit designing, computer science, electronics design and communications engineering.

Added to this, a new concept called Systems on Chips (SoC) has been created, where in addition to electronic components such as diodes and transistors, even other components such as sensors are mounted on the chip, further decreasing the need for space.

In implementing this technology, some challenges are faced. The traditional CMOS technology is based on storage through charges. As components are scaled, the amount of charge that can be used decreases and the chance of noise in stored data increases.

Alternate architectures, therefore, do not use charges, but instead turn to other forms of storage. Phase Change Memory (PCM) is one such system where a cell containing a material capable of changing phase from high resistance to low resistance and vice versa is used. Similarly, Ferroelectric RAM (FeRAM) uses the remnant polarization in ferroelectric materials such as PZT (Lead Zirconate Titanate).

Further, the fundamental component of an IC Chip, the transistor, is also radically changed from the original design to progress the process of scaling. Nano-wire and Nano-tube based one dimensional transistors could be the solution. Of these, the Carbon Nanotube Transistor is the most notable choice, along with Resonant Tunnel Transistor. The Single Electron Transistor is another promising candidate, research in which has led to the creation of a budding field called Spintronics. Spintronics is the study of the spin of a single electron. This is a characteristic that is uniquely defined for each electron in an atom. Using this technology to manipulate the spin of electrons, memory storage devices can be scaled by a very large factor.

Another major challenge of scaling is the statistical nature of the fabrication process for the components. At such a small size, even minor differences in the devices lead to large differences in the performance of those devices, and differences are very likely to arise in spite of using the exact same fabrication technique. Due to this, a trade off needs to be made between speed and perfection, making industrial production still a distant vision.

Yet, in spite of challenges, the future for nanoelectronics is very bright. It has applications in various fields including medicine, for pacemakers and to clear arteries and veins; smart materials for military uniform or space suits that can dry itself or change color; memory storage to save server space for companies like Google; the number of applications are only limited by ingenuity, and it is safe to say that nanotechnology and nanoelectronics is the future of the world.

1. What is nanoelectronics?

Nanoelectronics is the field of study dealing with electronic components of the order of 10^-9 m and their integration to form a comprehensive system.

2. Who is the founder of the field of nanoelectronics?

Nanoelectronics deals with semiconductors, and one of the primary semiconductor devices used is the transistor.

The first transistor was made by William Shockley in the year 1948, for which he, along with two of his students, received the Nobel Prize for Physics.

However the field of nanoelectronics would be nothing without the invention of the Integrated Circuit Chip (IC chip).

The man who made this possible is Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments in the year 1958.

The IC Chip would not be where it is today without the work of Robert Noyce, Co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductors, nick-named 'The mayor of silicon valley'.

Noyce was responsible for integrating multiple devices onto a single silicon chip, giving new meaning to the phrase 'Integrated Circuit'.

Once the IC Chip was in the market, Gregor Moore, also Co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductors, with his iconic 'Moore's Law' forced semiconductor companies to push the limits of the field to reach where it is now.

Therefore, the field of Nanoelectronics was evolved rather than founded, and the correct question would be "Who are the founders of the field of nanoelectronics?"

3. How will nanoelectronics shape the world?

Nanoelectronics has profound impact on many fields.

Medicine:

Pacemakers that run on nanoelectronics are less susceptible to failures due to outside situations

Arteries and veins can be cleared by incinerating blockages using nano particles

Defective/dead parts of the brain can be re-vitalized, helping in cure of blindness or paralysis

Material Science:

Nanoelectronics embedded in cloth can make self drying and color changing cloth

Nanoelectronics embedded in a cloak can bend light and create invisibility (Research already shows a lot of promise on this invention)

Nanoelectronics embedded in roads can create smart roads that direct vehicles to avoid road blocks and eliminate traffic jams

Consumer Electronics:

Flexible screens and screen-less displays

Converting tabletops and walls into multi-functional displays

Creating smart homes where all appliances can communicate with each other

Defense/ Military

Automobiles

Forensics

Travel

The list is endless.

4. When will we see these innovations become the norm in the world?

Today, these technologies are still under research at various stages.

Some are established but yet to hit the consumer market due to in-feasibility of industrial production or very high cost.

Some are established in concept and theory but are yet to be made a reality.

Some are still ideas of what to do with this wonderful new technology.

Some are still undergoing research for the physical feasibility of such an application.

All things considered, the way mobile phones have made our life from forty years ago, forty years from now, by the 2050's, the world will seem like a completely different place.

The next difficulty lay in finding an article of the right size. Some were meant for beginners and ran into hundreds of pages, starting from the very basics. Others were clearly meant for people who thoroughly understand the field and were only a page or two long with little background explanation, but a very high density of information. After much searching through IEEE papers and other institute journals, I finally found the right paper of the right length.

IEEE Articles and papers

IEEE Xplore Digital library

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org

IEEE Technology Navigator

http://technav.ieee.org

Scientific American Journal

http://www.scientificamerican.com

Science Direct Online Journal

http://www.sciencedirect.com

http://www.sciencemag.org

http://www.nature.com

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses

1. This subject borders on quantum physics. How much theoretical physics background is required to understand this science?

2. Research in this field requires very precise and expensive equipment, and not many labs have access to such equipment. What can be done to improve the accessibility of these equipment so that more laboratories around the world can be involved in the research initiative?

3. In today's fast developing world, how long will research in this field be relevant?

4. The main aim of this research is to create useful technology using nano electronics. Which sector, for example health or defense or consumer electronics, would be most affected in a positive way by new technologies?

5. Which sector would be most negatively affected?

6. What are some of the challenges faced in bringing these technologies out of the lab and into the industry as a common man's product?

7. Beyond consumer products and services using nano electronics, what is the scope for this research in the near and far future?

The main aim of this questionnaire is to understand, from the perspective of a working professional and a scientist, the current situation of the field and where it is headed in the next fifty years.

Scaling: The process of decreasing the size of components on a chip by a known factor to increase the density of components on it.

CMOS: Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor is the semiconductor technology in use in today's microchips, where oxides of silicon and germanium are fused.

Photolithography: The process used in micro fabrication to pattern parts of a thin film, using light to transfer a geometric pattern from a photo mask to a light-sensitive chemical coating on a chip.

Varactor: This is a type of diode designed to exploit the voltage-dependent capacitance of a reversed-biased p–n junction to generate a variable resistance in a circuit.

Automated drug release

Material Science:

Smart material for wearable technology

Consumer Electronics:

Converting anything into a screen

Defense/ Military:

Miniature remote surveillance

Research in these applications is well under way and shows a lot of promise for the near future. A lot of funding is going into medical research from private parties, corporations and governments, providing researchers with the means and the encouragement to provide solutions as soon as possible.

Also, due to a large number of people having similar problems across the world, medical solutions can easily be implemented on a global scale.

This technology will become accessible to the common man very soon as an equal effort is also being put into reducing the cost of making nano electronic systems.