Nanoelectronics

[Lara]

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

 

[Bob Masta]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 09:32:38 GMT, "Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote:

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

Hard to guess. Consider that vacuum tubes are the original
electronics device and they are still in use, just not very wide
use. But then again, tunnel diodes and unijunction transistors
are essentially extinct. It probably depends on the relative
strengths and weaknesses of the technologies for any
given niche. Perhaps nanotech won't be very good at power
handling, fo instance, so the present devices will still handle
that role.

Or perhaps nanotech will never take off at all, like bubble memories
and a host of other sure-fire winners.




Bob Masta
tech(AT)daqarta(DOT)com

D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
Shareware from Interstellar Research
www.daqarta.com

 

[Ian Stirling]

In sci.electronics.design Lara <lara@hotmail.com> wrote:

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

It kind of depends.
Nanotechnology is a very wide field, encompassing everything
from traditional wet chemistry that could easily have been done
in the 1800s, that produces nanometer scale devices.
To 'mature nanotechnology', which is taken by many people to mean robots
and computers constructed on the nanometer scale, that can do essentially
anything biological cells can, but with lots more flexibility, and
fewer limits as to materials.

On the one hand, this is stuff that is currently in face creams, on
the other, it's stuff that could, with the appropriate programming,
turn you into a gorrilla, give you extra arms, ...


It looks likely that at some point in the future, the second one will
come about.
The exact way we wil get from the first to the second is somewhat
unclear.

For the second one, electronics as we know it is totally subsumed
in the whole of nanotechnology.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inquisitor@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
Prosperity and ruin issue from the power of the tongue.
Therefore, guard yourself against thoughtless speech.

 

[John Jardine]

Lara <lara@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:WqOSa.1582$pI3.159@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com...

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?


Just the same as when I.C,s started out, except even smaller. We'll make use

of the bits as *part* of a product but will be able to pack even more
complexity into the same space.
regards
john

 

[David Harmon]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 09:32:38 GMT in sci.electronics.basics,
"Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote:

Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.

You will have to learn a few new things, but you should not forget what
you learned before. Everything you learned about vacuum tubes is still
useful when designing with FETs (a vacuum tube is just a hollow-state
FET with a heater.)

 

[Dwayne]

It's just a new niche. Only time will tell whether it stay that way or
expands.

Dwayne


"Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:WqOSa.1582$pI3.159@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com...

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

 

[Marc H.Popek]

There is a small chance things will shrink for EE devices. Smaller is
better in electronics and>>>> W HAT <<<<<<


your entry please

Marco

















"Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:WqOSa.1582$pI3.159@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com...

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

 

[Chris1]

In article <bfjn77$289$1@sparta.btinternet.com>, "news" <ijaz.mughal@btopenworld.com> wrote:

Nanotechnology in recent times c1995 has changed with the recent discovery
that the carbon molecule can be reconstructed after destroying it with high
powered lasers.

?

Once you have what is essentially carbon ash,

Carbon ash is Carbon Dioxide.

you can reconstitute it to a
new basic shape. This is the Bucky ball, a football shaped

Soccer ball?

set of molecules
assembled by adding hydrochloride acid to the ashes of carbon and allowing
it to form into crystals. The Buckmiesterflourine

Buckminsterfullerine?

as is sometimes also
called has many useful and exciting possibilities. Thousands of patents have
been filed on variation / creations of this stuff. Some combinations of the
Carbon molecule with 'a difference' include Superconductors that when
combined with Potassium form a no resistance material. mmm ...what
possibilities.
Truly this discovery has the makings of Future Tech-fi stuff. Warp core and
all!!!
The Molecules can even be assembled into any shape or combined to do other
spiffing things.
My favorite scenario is that of the ultimate recycling world, basically
what we do at the moment by incinerating our rubbish only at much higher
temperatures and then the waste is reconstituted to form Raw Bucky Balls
material for re-use. mmm...many benefits.
Strange thing that this technology could replace our dependency on Fossil
fuels and that Exxon played a big part in its discovery as well.

Very doubtful.

Chris

 

[news]

"John Jardine" <john@jjdesigns.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in message
news:bfhbuf$agg$1@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...

Lara <lara@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:WqOSa.1582$pI3.159@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com...
Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

Nanotechnology in recent times c1995 has changed with the recent discovery
that the carbon molecule can be reconstructed after destroying it with high
powered lasers.
Once you have what is essentially carbon ash, you can reconstitute it to a
new basic shape. This is the Bucky ball, a football shaped set of molecules
assembled by adding hydrochloride acid to the ashes of carbon and allowing
it to form into crystals. The Buckmiesterflourine as is sometimes also
called has many useful and exciting possibilities. Thousands of patents have
been filed on variation / creations of this stuff. Some combinations of the
Carbon molecule with 'a difference' include Superconductors that when
combined with Potassium form a no resistance material. mmm ...what
possibilities.
Truly this discovery has the makings of Future Tech-fi stuff. Warp core and
all!!!
The Molecules can even be assembled into any shape or combined to do other
spiffing things.
My favorite scenario is that of the ultimate recycling world, basically
what we do at the moment by incinerating our rubbish only at much higher
temperatures and then the waste is reconstituted to form Raw Bucky Balls
material for re-use. mmm...many benefits.
Strange thing that this technology could replace our dependency on Fossil
fuels and that Exxon played a big part in its discovery as well.

Another discovery was made by scientists that when using the tunnelling
electron microscope, the atoms being examined could also be moved around.
From basic spelling tricks to building atom sized machinery that can do just
about anything any machine can. This is where the component level will go
and a new range of devices will be born...hoorah!

__

IHM

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 09:32:38 GMT, "Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote:

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

Having cleaned out most available silly and greedy investors with
dot-com scams, the VCs are hoping there's still a little savings left
to scoop, so they're promoting nanotech, whatever that means. By the
general definition, man-made structures below 100 nm in size, VLSI
chips are already nanotech.

John

 

[Ben Bradley]

In sci.electronics.design, "Lara" <lara@hotmail.com> wrote:

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.

It won't be just an electronics revolution, it will be The Next
Revolution, when-and-if it actually happens. It certainly COULD
happen, though it may take many more years/decades before we read
anything other than research advances. It's been many years since a
few atoms were arranges on a surface to say "IBM."
If you asked experts 20 or 40 years ago, the vast majority of
electric power was supposed to be generated by controlled fusion by
the 21st Century. There has been lots of research on it, and steady
but slow progress, but it's still not commercially viable. I recall
reading about Josephson junctions, bubble memories that someone
mentioned (hey, there were actual bubble memory products, if you
didn't blink), and many other technologies that for one reason or
another didn't (at least yet) pan out. Nanotechnology might end up
taking a similarly long development path before it ends up in
commercial products.

Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

These will still be in use, at least for a while after
nanotechnology appears. I suspect that analog electronics won't be
quickly or directly replaced by analog nanoelectronics. It will most
likely be used to make digital circuits, since that's where a huge
number of very small, low-powered devices is most desired. While it
may be possible to make nano-analog parts (perhaps as enhancements of
'perfect' transistor devices such as National's LM394), I think it
more likely that many analog devices will eventually be replaced by
nano-digital circuits made of high-resolution, high-speed A/D's, DSP's
and D/A's. Nanoelectronic chips will surely interface directly to
standard electronics, at least to begin with.
This is fun stuff to speculate on, but I don't think you'll have to
worry about having to learn these 'new, special parts' for a while.
[now that I say that, no doubt IBM will announce 'grey goo' growing
out of their labs' HVAC exhaust ducts next week]

Here are a couple of online books on nanotechnology (also available
in bookstores) by K. Eric Drexler, a strong proponent. I've read the
first [actually had the book for years, but only read it recently,
prompted by Crichton's "Prey"), and am in the middle of the second
one. There's a description of computers made of nano-MECHANICAL parts,
running at about a million operations per second, but nanotechnology
easily offers several orders of magnitude faster operation for
electronic rather than mechanical devices. Current IC digital
technology is obviously into the Gigahertz range, and there's every
reason to think nanoelectronics will be substantially faster.

http://www.foresight.org/EOC/
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/

 

[Dwayne]

"Chris1" <chris54321@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:tQOdnfd0YbTcMICiXTWJhg@dls.net...

In article <3f1d9d39.4485214@newsgroups.bellsouth.net>,
ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com wrote:

There's a description of computers made of nano-MECHANICAL parts,
running at about a million operations per second, but nanotechnology
easily offers several orders of magnitude faster operation for
electronic rather than mechanical devices. Current IC digital
technology is obviously into the Gigahertz range, and there's every
reason to think nanoelectronics will be substantially faster.

I don't understand how this is seen as anything new. After all, they've
been steadily reducing the size of semiconductors for 50 years. Why is it
suddenly something new and different that they've nanometer scales?

It's just Hype.
Nanobots!
Cytobots!
ya right -> Crackpots.


Dwayne

 

[mike]

Lara wrote:

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?

I think nanotechnology will do serious damage to our health before
we realize it.
My (mis)understanding is that mad cow disease is a simple self-assembly
of long mollecular chains. They just keep getting longer until they
burst the host cell and you die. Thousands of mad scientists trying to
make self-assembling stuff scares the hell out of me...
mike

--
Bunch of stuff For Sale and Wanted at the link below.
400cc Dirt Bike 2003 miles $495
Police Scanner, Color LCD overhead projector
Tek 2465 $800, ham radio, 30pS pulser
Tektronix Concept Books, spot welding head...
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/4710/

 

[Ben Bradley]

In sci.electronics.design, chris54321@hotmail.com (Chris1) wrote:

In article <3f1d9d39.4485214@newsgroups.bellsouth.net>, ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com wrote:

There's a description of computers made of nano-MECHANICAL parts,
running at about a million operations per second, but nanotechnology
easily offers several orders of magnitude faster operation for
electronic rather than mechanical devices. Current IC digital
technology is obviously into the Gigahertz range, and there's every
reason to think nanoelectronics will be substantially faster.

I don't understand how this is seen as anything new. After all, they've
been steadily reducing the size of semiconductors for 50 years. Why is it
suddenly something new and different that they've nanometer scales?

It's not the size as much as it is going from a different
direction. As you say, current chips are made smaller and smaller by
photoreduction (currently using x-rays instead of visible light, IIRC,
to get better resolution with the smaller wavelength of x-rays), and
current signal 'traces' on chips are as small as a few hundred atoms
wide. But it's still similar (in the grossest sense, of course) to
making photo-etched printed circuit boards. IC's with features under
100nanometers are legitimately called nanotechnolology, but that's not
what I'm talking about, and I don't think that's what the original
poster was asking about.
The nanoelectronics/nanotechnology I'm thinking of is called
"molecular nanotechnology" by Drexler. It is the building of devices
by moving one atom at a time to create custom molecules, and devices
and systems out of those atoms and molecules. If you doubt the
possibilities of this, some of this has been done. The first scanning
tunneling microscope (STM), which can image atoms on the surface of a
solid, was built over two decades ago. Shortly after, an STM was used
to move atoms one by one to put them in exact desired positions. See
Figure 5 at this link:
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/chapt_4.html
I recall first seeing that image in Scientific American when it was
new, and there was an earlier SA article on the scanning tunneling
microscope.

Drexler makes the point of distinguishing the word nanotechnology
here, in the fifth paragraph under "Technologies Revisited":
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/chapt_1.html
"(Be cautious of other usages, though—some researchers have begun to
use the nano- prefix to refer to other small-scale technologies in the
laboratory today. In this book nanotechnology means the precise,
molecular nanotechnology of the future. British usage also applies the
term to the small-scale and high precision technologies of today—even
to precision grinding and measurement. The latter are useful, but
hardly revolutionary.)"

You can even buy an STM and play with this stuff yourself - here is
the website of a manufacturer of STM's:

http://www.di.com

There are no prices listed, though, and I suspect they're not
cheap.

>Chris

 

[ddwyer]

In article <WqOSa.1582$pI3.159@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com>, Lara
<lara@hotmail.com> writes

Nanotechnology seems to be the next revolution in electronics.
Will this mean the BJT, FET etc will go the way of the vacuum tube
and we will have to learn about new devices all over again.
Or will BJT's FETs opamps etc be still in use?


As with all new buzz words the reality is a means of getting research

money out of technically ignorant accountants.
Some nono structures will be useful, many more intermediate slightly
bigger MEMS structures will have greater impact.
In electronics devices nano structures have quantum implications, (bad )
, very small things wont work like bigger ones (good) sometimes to
advantage like the nano filaments that give 50% optical efficiency.
--
ddwyer

 

[Ian Stirling]

In sci.electronics.design Dwayne <umchrus1*No_SpAm*@cc.umanitoba.ca> wrote:

"Chris1" <chris54321@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:tQOdnfd0YbTcMICiXTWJhg@dls.net...
In article <3f1d9d39.4485214@newsgroups.bellsouth.net>,
ben_nospam_bradley@mindspring.com wrote:

There's a description of computers made of nano-MECHANICAL parts,
running at about a million operations per second, but nanotechnology
easily offers several orders of magnitude faster operation for
electronic rather than mechanical devices. Current IC digital
technology is obviously into the Gigahertz range, and there's every
reason to think nanoelectronics will be substantially faster.

I don't understand how this is seen as anything new. After all, they've
been steadily reducing the size of semiconductors for 50 years. Why is it
suddenly something new and different that they've nanometer scales?

It's just Hype.
Nanobots!
Cytobots!
ya right -> Crackpots.

Cells exist.
Unless God decides to change the rules, and forbid it, there is no
physical reason why you can't create objects that can do at least what
cells can.
It's just a simple matter of engineering.
There is also good reason to believe that you'd be able to sidestep
quite a few of the limitations of cells, if you don't have to evolve them.

This doesn't of course say that it will happen in 50 years, or 500.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inquisitor@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"Don't count the humans out until the last one is dead and you have
hacked its body to bits and eaten it" -- John Ringo.

 

[Ian Stirling]

In sci.electronics.design Dwayne <umchrus1*No_SpAm*@cc.umanitoba.ca> wrote:

It's just a simple matter of engineering.

SIMPLE?!?! Oh ya that's the right term to use.

Irony: Of or related to iron.

--
http://inquisitor.i.am/ | mailto:inquisitor@i.am | Ian Stirling.
---------------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------
"I meant, have you ploughed the ocean waves at all?" Colon gave him a cunning
look. 'Ah, you can't catch me with that one, sir' he said 'Everyone knows
horses sink' -- Terry Pratchett - Jingo

 

[Fred Abse]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 17:46:29 +0100, John Larkin wrote:

Blasphemy: machine which manufactures irony.

No, that's a blasphurnace

--
Then there's duct tape ...
(Garrison Keillor)
nofr@sbhevre.pbzchyvax.pb.hx