Introduction to Nanotechnology for Electronics

Nanotechnology has already reached the electronics industry with features in microprocessors now less than 100 nanometres (nm) in size (Intel’s Prescott processor uses 90 nm size features). Smaller sizes allow faster processing times and also more processing power to be packed into a given area. However, these advances are really only a continuation of existing microelectronics, and will reach their limit sometime around the end of the next decade (2018 or so) when it will be both physically impossible to “write” or “etch” smaller features in silicon, and also because at extremely small sizes (less than 20 nm) silicon becomes electrically “leaky” causing short circuits.

Nanoelectronics on the otherhand offer a new approach for the electronics industry in the form of new circuit materials, processors, information storage and even ways of transferring information such as optoelectronics.

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