Created the first computer from carbon nanotubes

Inspired by the idea of ​​a more compact and high-performance electronics, researchers from Stanford University created the world's first working computer, which consists entirely of carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes were used in the development of a new type of transistor capable of replacing silicon chips in the future. Carbon nanotubes can also help treat cancer.

This is the most complex electronic device ever created using carbon nanotubes. This topic was widely discussed, but no one believed that you could actually create something like this, ”says Max Shulaker, co-author of the work published in the scientific journal Nature.

Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical crystals of carbon atoms. The transistors of the nanotubes are very small, which allows you to significantly save space on the chip when compared with silicon transistors. Adding high conductivity and reaction here, we will get increased work speed and energy efficiency. This is especially important because of the limitations inherent in silicon transistors: approximately every two years, engineers double the number of transistors on a chip. However, scientists have predicted the end of Moore's law in a few decades.

The computer built by Shulaker and his colleagues is rather primitive: it uses only 178 transistors and is controlled by a simple operating system that allows counting and sorting numbers with the ability to switch between two tasks.

However, no group of scientists has previously been able to create a computer based on carbon nanotubes. There were reasons for this. First, carbon nanotubes line up on their own, as they like. Secondly, in the process of self-organization, they can acquire metallic properties, which can lead to a short circuit.

We have done a lot of work to make the nanotubes line up in the direction we need. When a single chip contains billions of transistors, an error of 2 percent can lead to a serious problem, the researcher says.

The Stanford University scientists managed to overcome these two problems thanks to technology that prevents the formation of an imperfect structure. It is supposed to remove (evaporation) metallic nanotubes with the help of current. According to researchers, in the future, this method of obtaining carbon transistors can be used on an industrial scale, which will allow competing with silicon analogues.

To create more complex computers will require additional research.

It would be naive to think that everyone will immediately abandon silicon. But maybe someday Silicon Valley will be renamed Carbon Valley, Shulaker says.

Previously, scientists from the same university have developed fully carbon solar cells.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/sozdan-pervyj-kompyuter-iz-uglerodnyx-nanotrubok.html.