NANOTECHNOLOGY

1. NANOTECHNOLOGY By: David Seijo Dr. Hoganson N-tier CSIS 4490

2. What is Nanotechnology? • Nanotechnology is the technology for designing, fabricating, and applying “nanosystems” -nanometer-scale systems • A nanometer is a billionth of a meter (10^-9) and spans approximately 10 atomic diameters

3. What is needed to make nanotechnology work? • A nanocomputer - must have a computer to run nanoapplications, hold the data of their construction, and their basic instructions. • A working nanogear - one of the basics of all macro machines, we must be able to construct a functioning gear on the molecular scale from which more complicated mechanized devices can be derived. • A nanomanipulator - must be able to accurately position each molecule in the precise configuration necessary for a nanomachines operation. • A nanoassembler- once the nanomachine is created, there must be some way of duplicating it. http://www.msu.edu/~hungerf9/nano.html

4. Who will benefit from Nanotechnology? • Mechanical field • Healthcare field • Computer Science field

5. Nanocomputing • A nanocomputer is a computer whose fundamental components measure only a few nanometers(<100nm) • Over 10,000 nanocomputer components could fit in the area of a single modern microcomputer component (= more speed & density)

6. Moore no ‘mo? • Moore’s law- the size of the microchip will diminish by a factor of 2 every 18 months. • If this holds true, we will need to find new ways to replace the current transistor technology, since it’s running out of space. • Quantum technology is starting to be used to solve this problem.

7. Areas of research on Nanocomputing • Mechanical nanocomputing- similar to Babbage’s idea of a mechanical computer. Problem- nanogears difficult to make and install (need to use Scanning Tunneling Microscope to “hand positioning” the molecules) • Scanning Tunneling Microscope allows to view the topography of a surface atom by atom. Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, researchers for IBM received the Nobel Prize (1986) for their achievement. • Chemical nanocomputing- are computers which process information by making or breaking the chemical bonds and storing the data in the resulting chemical

8. Areas of research on Nanocomputing • Electronic nanocomputing- more likely the way nanocomputing will go due to the experience with transistors. They will store information based on the positioning of the electron. The most promising data storage are single electron transistors and quantum dots (nanometer scale “boxes” that hold and release electrons). • Quantum nanocomputing- each bit of information will be stored in the position of the atom, such as a spin of an atom. Problems include susceptible to outside interference and need to work near zero degree temperature.

9. Spin up- spin down, that is the question! • Engineers can distinguish between a spin up or spin down electron by their electronic field orientation (north-up, north-down) • This will represent the 0’s or a 1’s as a digital computer

10. Uses of Nanotechnology • Peter Gruenberg and Albert Fert discovered Giant Magnetoresistive effect (GMR) in 1980 • GMR is high resistance to change from metals in alternating thin layers under very low temperatures. • In 1991 Almaden (Research Center of IBM) perfected this discovery and created a spintronic head • The spintronic head can detect much weaker electronic field and it arranges the electrons in up or down positions. • These lead to the creation of hard drives that can store 40Gbs per square inch.

11. M-RAM • Based on the spintronic head, researchers of Almaden, Honeywell and Motorola are trying to create magnetic random access memory. • Conventional RAM gets refreshed 60 times a second via an electrical surge, M-RAM has almost no electrical demands. • It will be able to hold data even when the computer is turn off, so no more boot-ups. • This can benefit the creation of spacecrafts, cell phones, PDAs, etc. • IBM should be selling M-RAM by 2004.

12. Nanoproblems: • Stability of data due to microscopic dust, quantum effects, electro-magnetic field influences, and time needed to find data. • Das Sarma, a leading Nanoengineer, thinks it will be at least 50 years before anybody builds a quantum computer.

13. Money and Nanotechnology • On January 23, HP and UCLA received the U.S. patent for molecular electronics • The U.S. government created a Nanotechnology budget of $500 million per year, starting in 2001

14. 411 on Nanotechnology • California NanoSystems Institute (http://www.cnsi.ucla.edu/) • UCLA (http://www.ucla.edu/) • UC Santa Barbara (www.qi.ucsb.edu/awsch) • HP (http://www.hp.com/) • IBM (http://www.ibm.com/) • University of Oxford's Center for Quantum Computation (http://www.qubit.org/) • Almaden Research Center (http://www.almaden.ibm.com/)

15. References: • http://www.discover.com/jan_02/feattech.html • http://news.com.com/2100-1001-821602.html • http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/7946/7946notw4.html • http://www.msu.edu/~hungerf9/nanocomp.html • http://www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.dir/fit.dir/nano.dir/nano%5B1%5D_files/frame.htm • http://www.spacedaily.com/news/chip-tech-01d.html • http://www.mitre.org/research/nanotech/quantum_dot.html