Archive for the ‘Nano News’ Category

By exploiting microtubules propelled by surface-adhered kinesin motors as motile nanoscale agents capable of performing basic computations, the subset sum problem was solved in a highly parallel approach. For more information, see Nicolau Jr. et al. in the Early Access Section of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

To read more: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/02/17/1510825113
(Contents prepared by H. Hess and posted by Y. Tzeng.)

Amani et al. recently reported near-perfect two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide, MoS2 with photoluminescence quantum yield of more than 95% by chemical treatment in a nonoxidizing organic superacid: bis(trifluoromethane) sulfonimide (TFSI), which eliminates defect-mediated nonradiative recombination.

To read more: Near-unity photoluminescence quantum yield in MoS2. Matin Amani, Der-Hsien Lien, Daisuke Kiriya, Jun Xiao, Angelica Azcatl, Jiyoung Noh, Surabhi R. Madhvapathy, Rafik Addou, Santosh KC, Madan Dubey, Kyeongjae Cho, Robert M. Wallace, Si-Chen Lee, Jr-Hau He, Joel W. Ager III, Xiang Zhang, Eli Yablonovitch, Ali Javey. Science 27 November 2015:  Vol. 350 no. 6264 pp. 1065-1068, DOI: 10.1126/science.aad2114

(Posted by Yonhua Tzeng)

Negative Capacitance FET (NCFET) can be viewed as a FET with built-in voltage amplification. The first ALD ferroelectric HfZrO2 based negative-capacitance FinFET with gate length as small as 30 nm was reported in IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2015) in Washington, DC USA. Small-signal voltage was amplified by 1.6X maximum at the internal gate with the sub-threshold swing improved from 87 to 55mV/decade. ION increased by >25% for the IOFF.

To read more: IEDM15-621 Paper #22.6.2

“Sub-60mV-Swing Negative-Capacitance FinFET without Hysteresis”

Kai-Shin Li(1), Pin-Guang Chen(2, 3), Tung-Yan Lai1, Chang-Hsien Lin(1), Cheng-Chih Cheng(3), Chun-Chi Chen(1), Yun-Jie Wei(1), Yun-Fang Hou(1), Ming-Han Liao(2), Min-Hung Lee(3), Min-Cheng Chen(1), Jia-Min Sheih(1), Wen-Kuan Yeh(1), Fu-Liang Yang(4), Sayeef Salahuddin(5), Chenming Hu(5)

(1) National Nano Device Laboratories, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, Taiwan. (2) Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. (3) Institute of Elecro-Optical Science and Technology, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. (4) Research Center for Applied Sci., Academia Sinica, Taipei,Taiwan. (5) Dept. of Electrical Eng. and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Tel: +886-3-572-6100 ext. 7706, Fax: +886-3-572-6109, Email: ksli@narlabs.org.tw

(Posted by Yonhua Tzeng)

By combining standard through-the-lens viewing with a technique called scatterfield imaging, the NIST team accurately measured patterned features on a silicon wafer that were 30 times smaller than the wavelength of light (450 nanometers) used to examine them. They reported that measurements of the etched lines—as thin as 16 nanometers wide—on the SEMATECH-fabricated wafer were accurate to one nanometer.

credit: NIST/Barnes
(Recommended by Ed Perkins, posted by Yonhua Tzeng)

To  read more:

1. http://www.nist.gov/pml/div683/measuring_nanoscale_features_fractions_light_12-2-2015.cfm
2. J. Qin, R.M. Silver, B.M. Barnes, H. Zhou, R.G. Dixson, and M.A.Henn,”Deep-subwavelength Nanometric Image Reconstruction using Fourier Domain Optical Normalization.” Light: Science & Applications. Article preview Nov. 5, 2015; e16038. To download: http://221.8.12.233/cms/accessory/files/AAP-lsa201638.pdf

The Modeling and Simulation technical committee focuses on topics associated with the formulation, development and use of theoretical models for the understanding and design of nanotechnological systems for engineering applications in a wide spectrum of human society. For this purpose, it addresses technical issues related to the development of numerical codes requiring basic software as well as large-scale computational resources such as density functional theory, tight binding methods, self-consistent Poisson-Schrödinger solver, Monte Carlo simulation, non-equilibrium green function techniques, molecular dynamics to name a few. Among the current and latest topics of investigation are modeling of nanoscale electronic and photonic devices and systems, advanced devices made of new low-dimensionality materials such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, spintronic devices and bio-nanoelectronic devices for molecular manipulation and sensing.

Schematic of a Graphene field effect membrane Transistor containing a nanopore for DNA sequencing (after

Anuj Girdhar, Chaitanya Sathe, Klaus Schulten and Jean-Pierre Leburton,  PNAS, 110 (42) pp.1648-1653 (2013))

(Submitted by Jean-Pierre Leburton, posted by Yonhua Tzeng)