Paint-on semiconductor outperforms chipsJuly 13, 2006New technology is cheaper, more powerful Researchers at the University of Toronto have created a semiconductor device that outperforms today's conventional chips — and they made it simply by painting a liquid onto a piece of glass. The finding, which represents the first time a so-called "wet" semiconductor device has bested traditional, more costly grown-crystal semiconductor devices, is reported in the July 13 issue of the journal Nature. "Traditional ways of making computer chips, fibre-optic lasers, digital camera image sensors — the building blocks of the information age — are costly in time, money, and energy," says Professor Ted Sargent of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and leader of the research group. Conventional semiconductors have produced spectacular results — the personal computer, the Internet, digital photography — but they rely on growing atomically-perfect crystals at 1,000 degrees Celsius and above, he explains. The Toronto team instead cooked up semiconductor particles in a flask containing extra-pure oleic acid, the main ingredient in olive oil. The particles are just a few nanometres (one billionth of a metre) across. The team then placed a drop of solution on a glass slide patterned with gold electrodes and forced the drop to spread out into a smooth, continuous semiconductor film using a process called spin-coating. They then gave their film a two-hour bath in methanol. Once the solvent evaporated, it left an 800 nanometre-thick layer of the light-sensitive nanoparticles. At room temperature, the paint-on photodetectors were about ten times more sensitive to infrared rays than the sensors that are currently used in military night-vision and biomedical imaging. "These are exquisitely sensitive detectors of light," says Sargent, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology. "It's now clear that solution-processed electronics can combine outstanding performance with low cost." The U of T development could be of critical importance to both research and industry, according to John D. Joannopoulos, a Professor at MIT. "The ability to realize low-cost, paintable, high-performance designer semiconductors for use as short-wavelength infrared detectors and emitters is of enormous value for a wide range of communications, imaging and monitoring applications," says Joannopoulos, the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics and director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The key to our success was controlled engineering at the nanometre lengthscale: tailoring colloidal nanocrystal size and surfaces to achieve exceptional device performance," says lead author Gerasimos Konstantatos, a doctoral researcher at UofT. "With this finding, we now know that simple, convenient, low-cost wet chemistry can produce devices with performance that is superior compared to that of conventional grown-crystal devices." University of Toronto |
|||||||||||||||||||||
| Related Semiconductor Current Events and Semiconductor News Articles Empa scientists synthesize graphene-like material Two-dimensional carbon layers, so-called graphenes, are regarded as a possible substitute for silicon in the semiconductor industry. MIT: Better way to harness waste heat New MIT research points the way to a technology that might make it possible to harvest much of the wasted heat produced by everything from computer processor chips to car engines to electric powerplants, and turn it into usable electricity. New study confirms exotic electric properties of graphene First, it was the soccer-ball-shaped molecules dubbed buckyballs. Then it was the cylindrically shaped nanotubes. Now, the hottest new material in physics and nanotechnology is graphene: a remarkably flat molecule made of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings much like molecular chicken wire. Small nanoparticles bring big improvement to medical imaging If you're watching the complex processes in a living cell, it is easy to miss something important-especially if you are watching changes that take a long time to unfold and require high-spatial-resolution imaging. JQI researchers create entangled photons from quantum dots To exploit the quantum world to the fullest, a key commodity is entanglement-the spooky, distance-defying link that can form between objects such as atoms even when they are completely shielded from one another. Working together to design robust silicon chips Designers of high-speed silicon chips have often had to compromise on performance levels for their integrated circuit designs because of physical weaknesses appearing during design verification or even in production. Understanding mechanical properties of silicon nanowires paves way for nanodevices Silicon nanowires are attracting significant attention from the electronics industry due to the drive for ever-smaller electronic devices, from cell phones to computers. Caltech scientists develop DNA origami nanoscale breadboards for carbon nanotube circuits In work that someday may lead to the development of novel types of nanoscale electronic devices, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has combined DNA's talent for self-assembly with the remarkable electronic properties of carbon nanotubes, thereby suggesting a solution to the long-standing problem of organizing carbon nanotubes into nanoscale electronic circuits. New 'finFET' promising for smaller transistors, more powerful chips Purdue University researchers are making progress in developing a new type of transistor that uses a finlike structure instead of the conventional flat design, possibly enabling engineers to create faster and more compact circuits and computer chips. Technology May Cool The Laptop Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? More Semiconductor Current Events and Semiconductor News Articles |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||