Six US semiconductor companies have teamed up to pursue long-term research with academic scientists and engineers. At two new university-based nanoelectronics institutes—and a third one in the works—the research varies, but the mission is the same: Find a technology to succeed CMOS.
The international semiconductor industry predicts that the lower size limit for CMOS, complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, the basis of today’s electronics, will be reached in about 15 years. The current generation of CMOS is at the 65-nm scale, and calculations suggest that below around 10 nm, excessive leakage, scattering, and power dissipation will make CMOS impractical.
The semiconductor industry has “become more and more interested in exotic physics. They can see that we are going to run out of capability with the technology we are using,” says Jeff Bokor, who specializes in nanofabrication and nanoelectronics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is a member of the...
