Fundamental Physical Limitations of Present Technology

4 Monetary and Fundamental Physical Limitations of Present Technology 

Interestingly, theoreticians devised a trend of their own that tracks with Moore s Law. The theoreticians heralded the end to silicon s densification, namely, the now famous silicon brick wall, or the point at which silicon devices could become no smaller. However, their prediction of the theoretical demise of silicon had to be continually revised because it was based upon a paradigm of technological barriers, i.e. the inability to pattern ever smaller line widths in silicon. The brick wall was not predicated upon a physical science barrier. The engineers in the solid state industry thankfully paid little heed to the theorists predicted day of doom for silicon, and the engineers proceeded to build smaller devices and denser integrated circuits. 

as devices increase in complexity, defect and contamination control become even more important. Since defect tolerance is very low in present systems, nearly every transistor must work perfectly, and when there are 42 million per chip, the challenge is colossal. For instance, cationic metallic impurities in the wet chemicals such as sulfuric acid used in the fabrication process are measured in the part per billion (ppb) range. With decreases in line width and feature size, the presence of a few ppb of metal contamination could lead to low chip yields. Therefore the industry has been driving suppliers to produce chemicals with part per trillion (ppt) contamination levels, further raising the cost of the chemicals used. 

Fourth, depending on the complexity of the device, the number of individual processing steps used to make them can be in the thousands. It can 

A new technology would be of interest to the semiconductor industry if it only addressed one of the problems in the chip manufacturing processes. But a new technology that produces faster and smaller logic and memory, reduces fabrication complexity, saves days to weeks of manufacturing time, and reduces the consumption of natural resources, would be revolutionary. Since silicon is approaching its fundamental materials science limits, a new platform would be the only solution. Can molecular electronics be the answer Many think so. 

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