The nano technology industry is currently one of the most active fields of technology and promising. Although there are examples of nanotechnology applied to virtually all of the main area of €‹€‹research and investment is clearly focused on materials applied to semiconductor technology. Furthermore, these two areas are complementary, since most of the techniques being employed for the growth of these nano materials, come from the semiconductor industry.
One current challenge for nano technology is the production. The cost of building new manufacturing semiconductor devices is huge, therefore, part of the current research focuses on what can be done with current technology of manufacture of semiconductor devices. After all, the semiconductor industry is manufacturing devices below 100 nm from the 80€s and current transistor technology is around 45 nm, although nanotechnology goes far beyond. The sizes of the devices are being designed a few atoms thick. The manufacturing process of these devices is rapidly improving in this area and we are seeing significant achievements such as building transistors with carbon nano tubes or nano wires using.
Field Effect Transistor creadocon a carbon nano tube single-wall
Moreover, consumer products are increasingly requiring better performance without requiring an increase in price. Therefore, the challenge for device designers is to improve performance in ever smaller devices, although this significantly increases the cost of production. Nano technology promises to help the industry to break the barriers currently in the design of devices, increasing miniaturization, eg over heating issues that entails.
Another difficulty that is facing the industry is the testing of these nanoscale devices. Researchers must design new ways to check for errors on devices that are built and defects in the growth of nanomaterials used.
They are investigating new techniques such as positron annihilation spectroscopy, or PAS. This technique is very useful for studying the properties of defects in nano materials. Positrons are the property of diffusing into the surface of these materials before disappearing, this helps to explore the atomic disorder and structure, allowing us to know the quality of these nano materials.
In addition, the existing characterization techniques are continuously evolving and improving, such as electron microscopy with aberration correction, which has reduced resolution of these devices below Armstrong. (0.1 nm), which allows studying the composition and structure of these materials atom by atom.
These improvements will help us to study nano materials on a much smaller scale, allowing us to know its structure and properties atom by atom. This not only allows us to check the quality of these materials, but will also give us the opportunity to learn about the properties of these materials and use them in the design of new devices that meet the demands of industry today.
References and links:
Nano World: A semiconductor nano tools boom. http://www.physorg.com/news5701.html World's Smallest Nanotube Transistor. http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=06788 The Impact of Semiconductor Industry on Krivanek et al. €Atom-by-atom structural and chemical analysis by annular dark-field electron microscopy€, Nature, Vol 464, 2010 PMG Nambissan, €Probing the nano-Defects in semiconductors using Positron€, Journal of Physics: Conference Series 265, 2011.