IBM Research Advances Post-Silicon Future

摘要

In what it calls a "major engineering breakthrough," IBM Research scientists demonstrated a new way to shrink transistor contacts without reducing performance of carbon nanotube devices, opening a pathway to dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful computer chips beyond the capabilities of traditional semiconductors, according to a press release. IBM's breakthrough overcomes a hurdle that silicon and semiconductor transistor technologies face when scaling down. In any transistor, two things scale: the channel and its two contacts. As devices become smaller, increased contact resistance for carbon nanotubes has hindered performance gains. These research results could overcome contact resistance challenges all the way to the 1.8 nanometer node - four technology generations away.