Electron beam creates ridiculously thin nanowires

[jimmy olsen]

Didn't they use displays like that in Caprica?

http://www.statecolumn.com/2014/04/electron-beam-creates-ridiculously-thin-nanowires/'

Electron beam creates ridiculously thin nanowires

What's the thinnest wire you can imagine? As thin as a human hair? Half that thickness? Try again. Using a narrowly focused beam of electrons, researchers at at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created metallic wires that are just three atoms wide. That's 1/1,000 of the width of wires typically found in modern circuits, themselves microscopic.

Junhao Lin, a Vanderbilt University Ph.D. student and visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is credited with the discovery. "Junhao took this project and really ran with it," said Sokrates Pantelides, University Distinguished Professor of Physics and Engineering at Vanderbilt University.

Combining the metals molybdenum or tungsten with either sulfur or selenium results in materials known as transition-metal dichalcogenides, or TMDCs. TMDCs are a family of semiconducting materials that naturally form monolayers. Junhao used a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) that is capable of focusing a beam of electrons down to a width of half an angstrom.

The creation of TMDC wires are a significant discovery. That's because while earlier scientists have been able to create functioning transistors and flash memory gates out of TMDC materials, until now they didn't have a way to connect them. Smaller, lighter wires could represent a huge leap forward in the design of integrated circuits.

"This will likely stimulate a huge research interest in monolayer circuit design," Lin said. "Because this technique uses electron irradiation, it can in principle be applicable to any kind of electron-based instrument, such as electron-beam lithography."

No one's yet sure exactly what the applications will be, but in all likelihood the materials will be used to design and build electronics lighter and thinner than ever before. Imagine, for instance display screens so thin they could be rolled up and transported in a briefcase or pocket.

[sbr]

Damn on a roll tonight Tim.

[jimmy olsen]

Damn on a roll tonight Tim.

Students are studying for their midterms, which start tomorrow. So I'm just standing here at computer station, typing away while they cram.