IBM defeated the "curse of contacts" for carbon nanotransistors

IBM announced that she managed to overcome one of the obstacles in working with transistors from carbon nanotubes: the company's engineers found a way to connect nanotubes to metal contacts through which electric current is coming. The description of the work is published in the journal Science .

Carbon nanotubes are a relatively new type of transistors, which can replace traditional silicon transistors due to their size: manufacturers such as IBM and Intel, this year reported that they are working on microcircuits according to the technological process of 7 nanometers. However, for their wide practical application, there are a number of restrictions. One of them is that for elements of less than 10 nanometers in diameter it was not possible to create effective contacts of the desired size. Engineers could reduce the size of the contacts, but to the detriment of their properties: the less contact was, the more resistance became, the transistor's performance fell.

IBM said that its researchers were able to solve this problem and create contacts with resistance independent of size. According to the publication in Science , for a carbon transistor with a contact with a size of less than 10 nanometers, it was possible to get a resistance below 36 kilom. This was achieved by placing contacts not on top of the tube, as in the traditional scheme, but from its ends, and forcing them to react with carbon, Mit Technology Review said . According to representatives of the company, this is a “large engineering breakthrough”, which allows you to make contacts as miniature as you need. The achievement of engineers gives reason to assume that in the foreseeable future, tiny transistors from carbon nanotubes will take the place of Silicon.

The increase in the performance of microprocessors is described by the Law of Moore, according to which the number of transistors placed on the crystal of the integrated scheme is doubled every 2 years. Recently, experts have started talking about the death of the Moore law, since the miniaturization of silicon transistors is approaching its limit. Carbon nanotubes are able to radically increase transistor performance and become the basis of a new generation of high -performance compact electronics. According to Wired , IBM plans to create transistors with a diameter of 5 nanometers and less (for comparison: the smallest silicon transistors in modern Intel products have the size of 14 nanometers). Estimated terms of the appearance of such elements are not called in the company.