AsianScientist (Apr. 8, 2014) – Researchers may have found a way to make electrical circuits run much faster.
The interdisciplinary research team, comprising of Christian Nijhuis from the Department of Chemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Michel Bosman from the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and Bai Ping from the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), used a modern physical process called quantum plasmonic tunneling to design and fabricate ultra-fast electrical circuits. These circuits run at very high terahertz frequencies and may possibly bypass the inherent speed limit of the copper-based interconnects that are found in many semiconductor devices.
Moreover, they demonstrated both experimentally and theoretically that very fast switching at optical frequencies, that is, frequencies detectable by the naked eye, is possible in molecular electronic devices. Now that the technology is available, it opens up possibilities for applications in high speed electronics at terahertz frequencies.
According to an editorial which accompanied the publication in Science, this new discovery will “almost certainly” further fuel the growth of interdisciplinary studies in the physics of plasmon excitations as well as molecular conduction in chemistry and materials science.
The article can be found at: Tan et al. (2014) Quantum Plasmon Resonances Controlled by Molecular Tunnel Junctions.
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Source: National University of Singapore; Photo: Mark, Vicki, Ellaura and Mason/Flickr/CC.
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