Technologies and Designs for
Nanometer-Scale Electronic Computers:
A Review and Prospectus
MITRE
Corporation
This is an abstract
for a talk to be given at the
Fifth
Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.
There will be a link from here to the full article when it is
available on the web.
The substance this presentation has been posted on the Web
in two MITRE review articles about nanoelectronics.
These may be found in the form of downloadable pdf files at
the URL:
http://www.mitre.org/research/nanotech/list_of_articles.html
For the past 40 years, there has been continual, rapid
miniaturization of electronic circuits in order to produce ever
more powerful computers. As this highly desirable trend
continues, in the forseeable future the basic components of
electronic computer circuitry will measure only a few tens of
nanometers across--i.e., a few hundreds of atomic diameters
across. A nanometer-scale electronic computer, as opposed to
other approaches for building a nanocomputer (i.e.,
nanomechanical, biochemical, quantum), has the advantage that it
builds directly upon the decades of experience and the huge
infrastructure of the world-wide electronics industry. However,
there are some significant new problems posed by the fact that
nanometer-scale electronic devices, or
"nanoelectronics," will be only slightly bigger than
the individual molecules that compose matter. By contrast,
present-day microelectronic devices are at least one micron (1000
nanometers) across, and their operation depends on effects that
are present only in bulk matter. These bulk effects are not a
satisfactory basis for operating molecular-scale/nanometer-scale
electronic devices. Thus, nanoelectronic devices not only will be
much smaller, but they must operate according to designs and
quantum mechanical principles different from those employed by
present-day microelectronic devices. Also, it will be necessary
to manufacture nanoelectronic devices and circuitry using
fabrication techniques that are significantly different from
those in use today. The speaker will present the results of a
several-year MITRE investigation of technologies and designs that
presently are in development to overcome such obstacles and to
permit the construction of nanometer-scale electronic computers.
The presentation will survey developments in solid-state
nanoelectronic devices and molecular electronic devices, as well
as innovative ideas for ultra-dense computer circuits and
architectures based upon these devices. It will also survey
selected developments in emerging technologies for
nanofabrication, such as chemosynthesis and mechanosynthesis,
that may assist in realizing an ultra-densely integrated
electronic computer. In addition, the speaker will discuss some
of the preliminary results from an ongoing effort at The MITRE
Corporation to develop a realizable architecture for a
molecular-scale electronic computer.
*Corresponding Address:
James C. Ellenbogen, Ph.D., Lead Scientist, Nanosystems Group,
The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA 22102, e-mail: [email protected]
http://www.mitre.org/research/nanotech/
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