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a much denser scale.
Graphite's other advantages were detailed in Tour's earlier work: the ability to operate with as little as three volts, an astoundingly high on/off ratio (the amount of juice a circuit holds when it's on, as opposed to off) and the need for only two terminals instead of three, which eliminates a lot of circuitry. It's also impervious to a wide temperature range and radiation; this makes it suitable for deployment in space and for military uses where exposure to temperature extremes and radiation is a concern.
Tour's graphite-forming technique is well-suited for other applications in the semiconductor industry. One result of the previous paper is a partnership between the Tour group and NuPGA (for "new programmable gate arrays"), a California company formed around the research to create a new breed of reprogrammable gate arrays that could make the design of all kinds of computer chips easier and cheaper.
The Tour lab and NuPGA, led by industry veteran Zvi Or-Bach (founder of eASIC and Chip Express), have applied for a patent based on vertical arrays of graphite embedded in "vias," the holes in integrated circuits connecting the different layers of circuitry. When current is applied to a graphite-filled via, the graphite alternately splits and repairs itself (a process also described in the latest paper), just like it does in strip form. Essentially, it becomes an "antifuse," the basic element of one type of field programmable gate array (FPGA), best described as a blank computer chip that uses software to rewire the hardware.
Currently, antifuse FPGAs can be programmed once. But this graphite approach could allow for the creation of FPGAs that can be reprogrammed at will. Or-Bach said graphite-based FPGAs would start out as blanks, with the graphite elements split. Programmers could "heal" the antifuses at will by applying a voltage, and split them with an even higher voltage.
Such a device would be
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| Contact: David Ruth druth@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University Source:Eurekalert |
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