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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-nanotubes-all-the-time dept.

The interplay of size and time may make carbon nanotubes the answer to the computer industry's prayers as it grapples with pressure to make silicon chips ever-smaller. Or the same factors may turn CNTs into a technological dead end.

Size refers to the dimensions of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) vs. the shrinking geometry of the components on today's silicon chips. A CNT is basically a tube whose wall is 1 carbon atom thick. The tube itself is 1 nanometer (nm, or one billionths of a meter, or one-thousandths of a micron) in diameter, although it can be tens of microns long. Although made of carbon, single-wall CNTs are excellent conductors thanks to quantum conductance, which allows electrons to propagate along the length of the tubes.

Time refers to the progression of Moore's Law, an observation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the number of components on a chip can be expected to double every two years, without an increase in price. According to that, about more eight years from now silicon technology, which has reached 14nm geometry, will reach the atomic level. At that time, presumably the industry will no longer be able to uphold Moore's Law by making silicon components continually smaller.

Will CNTs, with their 1nm geometry, be ready by then?


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  • (Score: 2) by VanessaE on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:38PM

    by VanessaE (3396) <vanessa.e.dannenberg@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:38PM (#261772) Journal

    Pretty much all of us here know this, but to the average person, if you say "carbon", they'll think of coal, coal ash, or some generic carbon-dioxide-related "waste" (i.e. carbon credits and whatever else the politicians are pushing), or maybe diamonds.

    You might get some people to think of graphite in the form of pencil lead, if they can remember their elementary school science classes and how it behaves when combined with paper and a resistance/voltage-controlled oscillator.

    In any case, they're not going to think of carbon as something that's especially conductive, let alone better than any metal.

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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:57PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:57PM (#261892) Journal

    Pencil lead tends to have a lot of clay mixed in with the carbon. Possibly the 9s "pencils" are free of clay, but you'll only find those in art classes, and not in many of them. They are, however, used by some artists who do shaded pencil drawings and need a really dark black without switching to ink.

    So if you get them to think of pencil lead, they won't be thinking of carbon, but of a mixture that's largely clay with some carbon added.

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