Berkeley Lab Fashions First Buckyball Transistor 114
Atomasoft Corporation writes: "The article here says: 'The first transistors to be fashioned from a single "buckyball" -- a molecule of carbon-60 -- have been reported by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley.' It won't take so much time and we will able to buy our Nanocomputers! What would happen if we can store all the information of internet in a sugar cube, in 2010?" As interesting as the buckyball/gold combination is the machine used to make them: "The gold electrodes used in this study were fabricated on Berkeley Lab's 'Nanowriter,' an ultra-high resolution lithography machine that can generate an electron beam at energies up to 100,000 volts with a diameter of only five nanometers."
IBM, eat your heart out... (Score:1)
I wonder if they'll make and upgrade for my old USRobotics Pilot 5000 haldheld?
Question (Score:3)
Sensitivity (Score:2)
Re:Explanation needed please (Score:3)
A bucky ball is a molecule of C60.
Basically it is 60 Carbon atoms together in a molecule that is shaped like a soccer ball
Wow! A transistor that holds 1 electron! (Score:2)
All I can say is 'cool'!
Capt. Ron
Here is how it works (Score:5)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:1)
YES!!!
I am willing to shock mount my computer, encase it in acrylic, and use liquid nitrogen to balance heat if it meant that I could have THAT kind of storage. I'd really hate to see the fsck time if the computer lost power without a clean mount though...
Imagine the possibilities . . . (Score:2)
*ACHOO*
Just TRY and find your computer now.
Or . .
Imagine taking a project-based class in learning how to build these things (a degree in nanotechnology).
Professor: "You didn't turn in your project."
You: "Yes, I did. I put it in that microscope slide on your desk so you wouldn't lose it."
Professor: "You mean the one I'm using to examine my e-coli culture?"
Re:Explanation needed please (Score:2)
This link [inetarena.com] has an article all about the discovery and naming of buckminsterfullerene.
what would happen... (Score:3)
well that's easy, microsoft windows 2010 (released on 2011) would fill a few pounds worth of sugar...
on a more serious note, i wonder if the rate at which humanity generates information (regardless of it relevance) will grow exponantially at the same rate as the media we use to hold it. so far it seems they've been pretty much the same for a while, i've always felt the same way about a HD, it seems huge when you buy it, but you always fill it out...
i guess eventually storage media's capacity will grow that much faster, when will that be? opinions?
These aren't useful for "HardDrives" (Score:1)
What If (Score:3)
Q: What would happen if we can store all the information of internet in a sugar cube, in 2010?
A: You would have to get a second cube to install Windows 2010.
Re:Explanation needed please (Score:3)
--
lukas
Carbon Structure (Score:2)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:2)
I assume that we are talking about the construct made of Buckyballs and gold about the size of a sugar cube? The weak link would be the possibilities of the gold bending and/or twisting out of alignment. Given how cheap titanium might be by the time it could be constructed, why not just sheathe the whole thing in a shock absorbing insulator and add a layer of titanium on the outside.
I am in no way involved directly, but I have talked with people who do tests on drive stress, including the IBM microdrive, and they can be made pretty impact resistant. (More so if the drive isn't spinning than if it is.) Those technologies should not be too dificult to translate to a device with FAR fewer moving parts and a much higher density.
B. Elgin
Other uses of computer hardware (Score:1)
Well still have less desk space ... (Score:3)
Of course by then whatever desk space you save with a tiny computer will be taken up by your 80 inch monitor. And you can perish the thought of sitting your monitor on top of one of those :)
That also raises another issue, I find it hard not to lose things like pens and cds off of my desk, when my pc is the size of a eunuchs prick i'll certainly waste a lot of money having to replace em :(
Bucky (Score:4)
Fans of Bucky who happen to be in the SF Bay Area should check out R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (And Mystery) of the Universe, a one-man play about his life, based on his writings, designs, and photos. It's fascinating. Info is at Foghouse, [foghouse.com] the theater company that's producing the show.
there are cubes and then there are cubes.. (Score:5)
uhm, be careful to label the right sugar cube. you don't want some hippie swallowing the whole internet now, do you?
--
Perfect lubricant? (Score:3)
such a testament to buckminster (Score:4)
Re:These aren't useful for "HardDrives" (Score:2)
IVII? (Score:1)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:1)
Re:Perfect lubricant? (Score:1)
Can you imagine? (Score:1)
Man, all you'd have to do to increase your computational resources would be to hang your jacket up in the closet!
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:1)
Re:Imagine the possibilities . . . (Score:1)
Long Time (Score:2)
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nano carbon everything... (Score:2)
Now we have the nano-sized transitor (MOS-FET, actually), the carbon nano-tubes (which have a variety of uses, from springs to struts, etc...) and the carbon nano-bucky ball. We have tiny electrostatic motors, tiny gears, and many other things that are shrinking in size.
Is there any group hell-bent on putting all of this nano-stuff together and making something?
I just get the sensation that we are approaching the point where we should have enough misc. nano-sized parts to actually make something VERY cool... mechanical style.
Ok, I'm really sick of typing 'nano' now. =)
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:2)
Carbon is, basically, a pretty funky element.
Buckyballs and nano-tubes show great promise for nanotechnology.
The ring around the Earth in 3001: Final Odessey by Arthur C. Clarke also springs to mind; made out of synthetically produced diamond, with tall towers connecting the Earth's surface to the ring in orbit. The surface area inside the ring was be enormous, and was home to millions (billions?) of people.
Carbon's the medium of life (on this planet, anyway), a great candidate for nanotechnology structures, and if diamond can be synthetically manufactured on a massive scale, would be the material for macro-scale projects.
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:1)
And the operating temperature is ?... (Score:5)
Do not Taunt Happy BuckyBall (Score:2)
Caution: Happy Buckyball may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds.
Happy Buckyball Contains a liquid core, which, if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at.
Do not use Happy Buckyball on concrete.
Geoff (credit to Saturday Night Live for Happy Fun Ball)
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:1)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:2)
Nanorobots play Soccer with a Buckey Ball! (Score:1)
bezerrkly (Score:1)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:1)
Re:Sensitivity (Score:4)
Hard drives are a hack because RAM is so expensive and difficult to maintain without loss (i.e. turn it off, away it goes). With this sort of technology, presumably we'd have a whole new realm of design to consider, such that we don't *need* offline storage (which is what hard drives used to be called) for the CPU to save to in case of power outage.
I look forward to the day when there's just memory, lots of it, it's very fast, and it doesn't require a lot of power to move parts around. *That* will be a computer worth obsessing about...
Re:what would happen... (Score:2)
I don't think that we're really generating any more information than in the past. I think that it has more to do with the format we use to store the information. I mean, a one paragraph document in an old word processor (like Works 1 or 2) compared to that exact same paragraph in Word 2000 is a few k smaller, at the very least.
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Read the atricle (Score:1)
the huge advantage that this discovery will bring is devices that because they operate using the the state of a single atom are soo small, and draw sooo little power that will wil be able to surpass everything currently being deigned by intel and amd
Icars
Packaging (Score:1)
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:2)
You forgot that in this happy, spiffy future of ours, the computer is too tiny to need a desk. Just wear it on your wrist and call it a watch. You can "plug in" wirelessly to the nearest monitor or simply the visor/whatever you carry around.
B. Elgin
Re:Wow! A transistor that holds 1 electron! (Score:3)
To get reliable operation from single
electron devices you need ambient energy
(temperature) to be low enough to not
distort signals too much. So most likely
practical devices will need liquid helium
scale temparatures. Researchers in this area
routinely envision PCs with something like
cryotech stuff only much fancier.
Supercooling will consume a lot of power.
So there may be a net gain in power consumption,
but that is not obvious right now.
Re:Explanation needed please (Score:2)
I found this article to be somewhat dissapointing. I was hoping that the researchers had come up with a way to concretely take an atom and use it as a logic gate. Instead, they 'used a solution' of atoms in-between electrodes and noticed that the solution had the properties of a transistor. Then they got 'excellent' correllation that there were in fact buckyballs in there.
Hopefully the day is not long off where one can take indidual molecules and string them together to perform complex boolean operations at the molecular level. When that happens, molecular computing will be a reality. But it ain't there yet. . . .
-s
Happy Fun Bucky Ball (Score:1)
Don't forget redundancy (Score:1)
Re:what would happen... (Score:1)
In the digital music example, perhaps people will prefer to use actual WAV files instead of mp3s so they don't lose any of the musical data eliminated in mp3s, and past that, ripped verisions of DVD-Audio, or Super CDs. It seems that this analogy will hold true for a variety of digitial mediums. It's not necessarily the programs themselves that will increase in size at this rate, it's the data files. Given the choice of a larger data file that will give more detail for what is trying to be accomplished, people will choose the larger file if their it fits within their storage capicity and their processors will be able to process them, which of course they will since good old Moore's law applies to those as well.
Maybe we will reach that maximum, but I don't think it will be for a while.
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Re:what would happen... (Score:1)
storage for it then it is not information.
In other words, you can't have more info than
you can store.
Re:Read the atricle (Score:1)
Um. What do you think your memory chips are built from?
Re:what would happen... (Score:4)
Then again, each person might end up with their own sugar cube storage & environment recording system which records their entire environment (at least audio/visual) from their own viewpoint 24/7 for their entire life. Encrypted, of course, and backed up wirelessly to a remote sugar cube, so that it won't be used against you.
(Now that I think about it, people will probably figure out ways to use up just about any form of memory that anybody can come up with...)
pants (Score:2)
or
I got the entire libary of congress in my jean pocket, want to see?
I think the ONLY REAL use of cool techonlgy is to be used to come up with better pick up lines.
This "bad boy" could have other apps... (Score:1)
If this beast "the Nanowriter" pumps out electron beams of only a 5 nanometre diameter, now we can get a truly infinite resolution monitor!
It could happen.
Re:what would happen... (Score:2)
And we haven't begun to store all the crap we're going to. Music has just started its digitization and pretty soon it'll be movies.
The big push will be the stuff to archive. We're already feeding massive amounts of data into our machines (for past societies that couldn't) so our kids can read about Easter Island and such.
Essentially I don't think we'll ever see the headline: Storage Research Halted. Scientists Declare "We Have More Than Enough Room Now"
In the morning (Score:1)
"Error, Internet is being digested"
*Me looks at coffee*
"Ah, Crap!"
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:1)
Diamond is very hard, but I don't think it's particularly strong, is it? I mean, it's incredibly easy to shatter a diamond. A diamond tower would probably have great tensile strength, but crummy rigidity. If an airplane hit it, it would rain diamond shards. That would really suck for the people below. :)
--
Hey! (Score:1)
Is that a transistor???? (Score:3)
From the article:
"the authors stated in their Nature paper. "The transport measurements demonstrate that single-electron tunneling events can be used both to excite and probe the motion of a molecule.""
Have these guys ever heard of a tunneling electron microscope? Have they not seen the "IBM" written using individual atoms? This doesn't sound too new to me yet. It is possible I am missing something since the article doesn't seem to be written for engineers. Of course, once I got to this part:
"McEuen says this quantized nano-mechanical movement of the carbon-60 might serve as a logic gate, a means of storing information in the position of the molecule that would be more stable and much faster than the current technology."
I realized they hadn't made a transistor yet. All they have done is connected two electrodes with carbon-60, and since they might be able to isolate carbon-60 between two electrodes, they might be able to make something useful with it. Heck, they only have two electrodes right now, and last I check, transistors were at least 3 terminal devices. I don't mean to belittle their work, it is definitely a good road to follow, but it is also definitely a long road still. Let's not all get too excited too early.
Re:And the operating temperature is ?... (Score:1)
--
What Would Happen... (Score:1)
...What would happen if we can store all the information of internet in a sugar cube...
Dude 1 Have you seen a sugar cube around here?
Dude 2 Yeah, on that plate. I put it in my coffee.
Dude 1 Dude! That was the whole internet. It was our only copy!
Dude 2 Oh well, S*&^ happens.
Dude 1 What's it taste like?
Dude 2 (sip...) sort of raunchy.
Lemons? (Score:1)
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:2)
I had a poke around on Google and this article [zyvex.com] on Zyvex's website (a molecular nanotech company) popped up, all about the use of synthetic diamond.
Some interesting ideas about diamond's applications in molecular computer production.
It also mentions that diamond fibres could perhaps be used instead to avoid the shatter problem.
Ah well, Arthur C. Clarke can't be right about everything, can he?
Re:Here is how it works (Score:2)
Lithograph (Score:1)
-------
CAIMLAS
Re:Perfect lubricant? (Score:3)
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:1)
Not when we use those organic glasses with ultra-high-resolution video for each eye, for true stereoscopic terminals. :-)
Re:And the operating temperature is ?... (Score:5)
The operating temperature of a single-electron transistor is set to a large extent by the capacitive charging of the dot where the electron resides. The first single electron transistors (SET) where fabricated with e.g. scanning electron microscope (SEM) e-beam writing technology, and the dots where consequently quite a bit larger than a single C60 molecule. A big dot has a large capacitance, therefore the charge of a single electron produces a very small voltage. Voltage, multiplied by the electron charge, yields an energy. Converting this energy to temperature, one obtains a very low temperature for an SEM-defined SET. However, the charging energy for a single electron on a buckyball is quite a bit higher. Therefore it is possible to envision devices that could operate at room temperature (e.g. the nanotube-based transistors work fine at room temperature). That said, Paul McEuen's experiment here is performed at 1.5 Kelvins (very cold) since they want to resolve very fine detail in the electron current/voltage characteristics that are associated with the vibrations of the buckyball. (I must admit- I only skimmed the article, so I might've missed something).
I'm leaving out some details here- the spacing between quantum mechanical electron energy levels is also important (it becomes bigger as the electrons become more confined in smaller devices).
Short answer- a sufficiently small single-electron device can operate at room temperature, if properly designed. The real trick (as mentioned in an earlier comment) is to integrate more than one device (say, oh a couple billion) into a useful device.
Looks like a relay. You can make computers of 'em (Score:3)
They've used buckyballs to bridge a gap, allowing conduction. They've used electric fields to bounce the buckyballs up and down, switching the conduction.
That sounds to me like a nanometer-scale relay - or getting very close to one.
Relays are amplifying switches. You can make computers out of them, just as you can make computers out of transistors or tubes. In fact, that's EXACTLY what was used in tabulators for decades, before (and even while) tubes moved in to do the faster stuff, creating the "elecTRONic computer".
Cray was still using relays to decode the panel display and as an IPL ROM in the Control Data 1604 in the 1960s. Most of the switches in the 1604 were germanium transistors - upgraded to silicon transistors later in its life cycle.
Indeed, transistors in modern CMOS circuitry are just serving as an approximation of relays. A CMOS logic gate's schematic looks much like the "ladder diagrams" used to this day to design relay-based logic circuits.
While moving small molecules is slower than moving electrons, it's comparable in speed to moving holes. So at nanometer scales an electromechanical relay, with a bucky ball or a molecular side-chain for the armature, can be an adequately (blazingly!) fast switching element.
Electrons are light and thus spread out. So they are very sensitive to temperature and have a long cross-talk range. Molecules are more compact and tend to focus electrons as well. So circuitry that uses a molecule, rather than a cloud of electrons, as the moving part in a switch might lead to higher component densities and a broader environmental operating range.
Sugar cube, huh? (Score:4)
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
The whole skinny on the C60 molecule (Score:1)
Want the full skinny on C60? Just read:
The Most Beautiful Molecule
The Discovery of the Buckball
ISBN 0-471-10938-x
Re:Wow! A transistor that holds 1 electron! (Score:1)
Re:what would happen... (Score:1)
You're absolutely right. It's human nature to consume, whether we need to or we should. Think a 1 MBit/sec internet connection is good enough, wait a year and see if it still is. I thought my 700 MHz Duron would rock for years to come, but I already want a faster one (preferably of the Athlon variety) :-). Basically, we'll never be satisfied until we either a)destroy this place, or b)become amish. I suppose, though, if we destroy this place we still won't be satisfied, there just won't be anyone left to complain.
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:3)
(Then again, so is any element, so that's somewhat redundant.)
Carbon is the only element capable of forming strong, stable, long bonds in any configuration we feel like. Not only that, since it's perfectly happy to donate an electron as well as accept one, it's perfectly happy bonding with itself.
It's not hard to figure out why certain elements are 'better' than others - carbon is simply the ideal building block, since I can build *any* structure I want out of carbon, plus maybe a few trace impurities. Now, since carbon is a light element, those bond energies are rather high, since the electrons aren't ridiculously shielded from the nucleus. So now you've got a strong, stable structure made out of one of the most common elements in existence. Oh, I definitely think carbon has a pretty bright future.
On topic for a moment, I'm greatly amused by this. Buckyballs have literally become a rather amusing joke in the scientific world, since everyone wants to use them for *something* - I've seen an article where they were using buckyballs to fight AIDS, for instance. The downside is that, unfortunately, somehow these plans never come to fruition.
So, for now, I'm skeptical. Call me back when you have more than just a transistor - say a few logic gates, and when you've got them cheaply.
Of course, that's an engineering problem.
Re:Sensitivity (Score:2)
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:2)
I will note, however, that this problem has already been solved. MOST ICs are already so small you would not only lose them, but couldn't connect them to anything. Most of an ICs 'package' is there so the damn thing can be handled and wired up to something.
Re:such a testament to buckminster (Score:1)
I had the priviledge once of taking a course in which Linus Pauling and Bucky both lectured.
Dr. Pauling was pleasant enough, but you always felt that it would be right to call him "Dr. Pauling."
Bucky would join me for a picknick lunch on the lawn because he just happened to be passing by. *HE* insisted that I refer to him only as Bucky, and there was no false reverse ostentation about it. Bucky was first and always, in his own mind, just another guy.
He shall be, and is, missed.
Re:Do not Taunt Happy BuckyBall (Score:1)
As long as we're talking about Nanotech... (Score:1)
Re:what would happen... (Score:1)
Also, information overload is caused by our ability to ACCESS more information, not because more information is suddenly there.
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Re:there are cubes and then there are cubes.. (Score:1)
far out.....
Re:Lithograph (Score:1)
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:1)
Re:Is that a transistor???? (Score:1)
This is a major outstanding problem with nanoelectronics nowadays- the third terminal. It's easy (well, if you have access to about a million dollars worth of e-beam equipment, or a hundred K of scanning probe equipment) to get two contacts onto a nanometer-scale device. The tricky part is the third contact. Typically, the third contact is underneath, the e.g. field-effect lead, and it's very big compared to the rest of the device. One can also do alot with only two contacts, if the device is hysteretic (i.e. has memory of its history).
Many of the molecular electronics groups, realizing the limits to our current ability in contacting and integrating electronic devices on this scale, are concentrating first on implementing very simple memory architectures. Various aspects and approaches to these ideas are being pursued at many places: several groups at Berkeley (mostly physics), Penn State University (chemistry, elec eng, physics), Harvard (chemistry), Notre Dame (physics), Delft (in Netherlands), HP, Rice (chemistry), IBM, and others. No-one knows yet what if any approach will pan out.
Re:Well still have less desk space ... (Score:1)
eudas
Re:Hey! (Score:1)
eudas
Re:what would happen... (Score:2)
For one example I'm painfully aware of, the size of reports in the aerospace industry has been increasing over the years -- and by "size" I mean total number of words, total number of figures, and so on. I suspect what's happening is that the effort which was once used to painstakingly correct (or simply do correctly the first time) the data package has now been diverted to the creation of more volume for the package, since correction on a computer-generated document is so easy.
When I started in the industry back in the early 80's, lots of engineers still wrote out their stuff by hand and gave it to the secretary to type up; they redlined the first draft, and a final copy was made. Now, the engineer types it in in the first place, the software fixes the spelling, and the engineer writes some more (just think how these guys talk... they write the same way! I can say this 'cause I'm one of 'em.).
Note that aerospace isn't the only place where this is happening -- it's pretty common, in my experience. And I haven't mentioned the amount of data (information) being generated by present-day science; just compare the handful of photos that the early Ranger lunar probes took, with the output of NEAR Shoemaker or Galileo. Or consider genome sequncing. Or numerical simulation of flow in aircraft design. Or numerical simulation of damn near anything.
I think there's a lot more information being generated, and it's only going to get worse.
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Re:what would happen... (Score:1)
This is pretty much what Netware has been doing forever. It's not a JFS, but it does have the revision control stuff. The main problem I could see with this would be Netwares memory requirements for large volumes (I had a 56GB drive array on a NW4.11 box which needed the better part of a gig of RAM just to mount).
Re:nano carbon everything... (Score:1)
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:1)
> it's perfectly happy bonding with itself
Me too!
But seriously, I did some undergrad work with high temp *super* conducting C60 intercalates - using things like potasium and sodium to fill the gaps in the C60 crystal structure... Groovy stuff with a lot of bright people working on it.
Here is a link [susx.ac.uk] to the Sussex fullerene research centre....
If they can pull this off - it would be somat!
The groups leader Prof Kroto jointly won the Nobel gong in '96
Of course the holy grail is *room* temp super conductors.
High temperature (at the moment) wrt super conductors is about 40K!
Re:Carbon Structure (Score:1)
Otherwise I agree entirely, we are in an age of high carbon usage. Carefully made synthetic diamond has already been suggested (in SciAm) as a substrate for TFT screens and other annoyingly difficult to manufacture semiconductors.
Just wait until the chips themselves are made of doped buckyballs connected with nanofibres made of single filament hyperconjugated carbon chains.
Silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide still have a long way to go but just maybe we're seeing the compounds and concepts that will replace them in a hundred years or so.
Elgon
Re:Question (Score:1)
-Chris
Re:Perfect lubricant? (Score:2)
I also remember reading somewhere that at really high temperatures and pressures fullerenes tended to become really hard, on the order of tungsten carbide or even diamond. Anyone wanta pour some sand in your engine oil?
Elgon
Why M$ doesn't make computers ... (Score:1)
-Forager
Re:Packaging (Score:1)
>the information from the cube.
You're assuming it won't have a "force of will" interface.
Where's the (commercial) beef? (Score:2)
Re:Read the atricle (Score:1)
I know. (Score:2)
I also have a Handspring Visor[Palm], which will evolve into a much more powerful computer, I'm sure of it, and it follows the same policy of using a permanent resident store for all data and applications...
Actually, I believe this is one of the reasons it's such a successful platform - the assumption that all data is always available, and there is no secondary 'commit' stage to offline storage means that the OS can be used a lot more efficiently by the end user
Re:what would happen... (Score:2)
I remember reading recently that the amount of information stored doubles every 4 years. It was given by some librarian-type so I would expect it to be fairly valid. Our storage media, however, has been increasing in size much faster, so I'm not too sure how they correlate. In the end I think the main factor would have to be the number of people that are storing data, and since our population is increasing exponentially, I guess our quantity of information would be following right along our population growth (I know this is rather simplified, but I'm not going to go into demographics and whatnot).
Re:Do not Taunt Happy BuckyBall (Score:2)