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The other challenge has been packing these two different types of nanowire transistors together on the same surface--and in a way that lends itself to mass production. The Caltech team created a checkerboard pattern of alternating p- and n-type silicon squares. Then they carved these squares into densely packed lines of nanowires, yielding p- and n-type nanowires that could easily be linked up to form transistors and circuits. Although the experimental circuits involved the use of relatively slow e-beam lithography to connect the wires, the researchers say that for mass production, similarly dense circuits could be made using much faster photolithography.
The first applications for the devices, sensors, are possible for the same reason nanowires are difficult to make reliably--their electronic properties change dramatically in response to slight changes to their surfaces. For example, a single strand of DNA could be attached to the surface of a nanowire. When a complementary strand of DNA (say, from a pathogen) in a blood sample linked to this DNA, a marked change in the resistance of the nanowire would register a hit. Hundreds of such sensors, each set to measure a different target, could easily be packed into a small chip in a handheld device. Testing each target with both types of transistors provides an automatic check against false positives, Heath says.
The Caltech work is a significant step forward for nanoelectronics, says Hongjie Dai, professor of chemistry at Stanford University, who has made similar circuits using carbon nanotubes. The move to CMOS with nanowires, he says, is "important if nanowires are to be used for future electronics applications."
Nanowire transistors could run inside microscopic biosensors or environmental sensors.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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72 Comments
DNA nanoelectronics breakthrough
Nanolectronics technology is under development at Vulvox. The President of Vulvox Nano/Biotechnology Corporation was interviewed about this breakthrough in molecular electronics. The interview was published in Nano Investor's News. In the interview Neil Farbstein discusses the implications of self assembling three dimensional integrated circuitry containing nanotransistors as well as novel technology to manufacture 5 nanometer CMOS type transistors that can be stacked in three dimensonal layers to construct chips that contain 50 trillion transistors in a square centimeter. That is a million times the density of today's integrated circuitry. It might be possible to construct a square centimenter DNA molecular electronics chip that contains all of the circuitry in the world's biggest currently operating supercomputer; blue gene L. According to the past President of the Georgia Chapter of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Thomas Netzel :
"If successful, this research program has the potential to develop two and three dimensional integrated circuitry with transistor densities a million times those found on today's integrated circuit chips. DNA diode and transistor research may lead to nanosized intelligent chemical probes and biosensors. Likely the world will be changed in innumerable ways if this research program is successful. I am glad to help you and your company take the first steps toward fulfillment of that goal."
Vulvox has a MEGA-TERABIT memory in the works! It will fit on a square centimeter chip and it will have the ability to hold every movie and videotape ever recorded and also every audiotape and every audio recording all in the space of a square centimenter. The ultimate I-Pod!
Corporations and University laboratories are encouraged to contact us at protn7@att.net
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23 Comments
Re: DNA nanoelectronics breakthrough
The above comment by Neil Farbstein, so called president of Vulvox, is untrue. He spams technology news forums with wild claims of his research, yet none of it exists. Farbstein is a conman trying to defraud investors.
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