High-Speed Integrated Nanowire Circuits

Chemists and engineers at Harvard University have made robust circuits from minuscule nanowires that align themselves on a chip of glass during low-temperature fabrication, creating rudimentary electronic devices that offer solid performance without high-temperature production or high-priced silicon.

The researchers produced circuits at low temperature by running a nanowire-laced solution over a glass substrate, followed by regular photolithography to etch the pattern of a circuit.

The technique was used to produce nanowire-based logical inverters and ring oscillators, which are inverters in series. The ring oscillator devices, which are critical for virtually all digital electronics, performed considerably better than comparable ring oscillators produced at low temperatures using organic semiconductors, achieving a speed roughly 20 times faster. The nanowire-derived ring oscillators reached a speed of 11.7 megahertz, outpacing by a factor of roughly 10,000 the performance attained by other nanomaterial circuits.

According to the researchers, these functional nanowire circuits demonstrate nanomaterials' potential in electronics applications. The circuits could be used in devices such as low-cost radio-frequency tags and fully integrated high-refresh-rate displays; on a larger scale, such circuits could provide a foundation for more complex nanoelectronics. The technique is also compatible with other commonplace materials such as plastics, broadening its potential applicability.

Visit http://cmliris.harvard.edu