OPTIMIZED SYSTEMS

Nanotechnology Center Breaks Centennial Ground

R. Colin Johnson | Date: 05-27-11 | Comments

A European research partnership aims to propel nanotechnology into the next hundred years of innovation in semiconductor, materials, security and related next-generation technologies.

Over the last 100 years, technological innovations have been the centerpiece of the semiconductor revolution, one of the most important of which was the scanning tunneling microscope, the inventors of which were recently honored by naming the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center after them.

Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer�the two Nobel laureates who invented the STM and both of whom attended the grand opening of the Center�set the bar high for the kind of technological breakthroughs expected from IBM Research in its first 100 years, ending in 2011. For its next 100 years, the new center on the campus of IBM Research (Zurich) will aim to emulate the kind of basic research that led to the STM�arguably the most important semiconductor breakthrough of the century, since it for the first time allowed engineers and scientists to "see" atoms on a surface.

The Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center will attempt to emulate the environment of innovation that fostered the invention of the STM, hoping to advance nanotechnology from a lab curiosity to a real-world solution for a whole spectrum of materials, semiconductor, energy and security applications.

The new Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center is the result of a 10-year partnership between IBM Research and the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, also in Zurich, where scientists will jointly extend the horizon of nanotechnology in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research called EMPA (Eidgenossische Materialprufungs und Forschungsanstalt).

The new Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center "represents a milestone in IBM�s centennial year," said Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research John Kelly at the grand opening. "IBM scientists will work side-by-side with our partners pursuing research to drive the future of information technology and nanoscience."

One primary goal for the new center will be to identify the successor to the semiconductor transistor, in hopes that nanoscale innovations will enable new devices to be crafted that use atomic precision to sidestep the scaling, overheating and power consumption woes besetting attempts to crank up the clock speeds and shrink the size of current microchips. Candidates include semiconducting nanowires that are 10 times more energy-efficient than today's transistors with zero-power standby modes, thereby eliminating "vampire" power (equipment that draws current even when it is in standby, which by some measures accounts for over 10 percent of global electricity consumption today).

The new center, which cost $60 million to build and an additional $30 million to equip, will also pursue advanced nanoscale materials�from security inscriptions to foil counterfeiters to electronics advances in carbon-based devices, spintronics, novel cooling structures, three-dimensional packaging, optoelectronics, silicon photonics and organic electronics.