First Complex Carbon Nanotube Circuits Demonstrated

Carbon nanotubes are one of of the most promising future nanomaterials and could among other applications enable the next exponential speed up of computer chips. While single transistors have already been made with the faster and more energy efficient material, it wasn't possible to scale-up the hard-to-handle technology to put many elements together to work in more complex circuits--until now.

Researchers at Stanford University have demonstrated the most complex carbon nanotube circuit to date, built into a simple hand-shaking robot with a sensor-interface circuit last week at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, although this simple circuit is still a long way from a processor in current devices. Computer models predict that such a carbon nanotube processors could be ten times less power-hungry, and thus also much faster than current silicon based chips.

The demonstration carbon nanotube circuit shows that nanotube transistors can be made at high yields, says Subhasish Mitra, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, who led the work with Philip Wong, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.

“This shows that carbon nanotube transistors can be integrated into logic circuits that perform at low voltage,” says Aaron Franklin, who is developing nanotube electronics at the IBM Watson Research Center.