Time is fast running out for the semiconductor industry as transistors become ever smaller and their insulating layers of silicon dioxide, already only atoms in thickness, reach maximum shrinkage. In addition, the thinner the silicon layer becomes, the greater the amount of chemical dopants that must be used to maintain electrical contact. And the limit here also is close to being reached.
But a Cornell University researcher has caused an information industry buzz with the discovery that it is possible to precisely control the electronic properties of a complex oxide material -- a possible replacement for silicon insulators -- at the atomic level. And this can be done without chemicals. Instead, the dopant is precisely nothing.
In a paper in a recent issue of Nature (Aug. 5, 2004), David Muller, associate professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell, and his collaborator, Harold Hwang of the University of Tokyo, report that by removing oxygen atoms from layers in thin films of the oxide strontium titanate, they can precisely control the conducting ability of the material by creating empty spaces, or vacancies, that act as electron-donating dopants. And they have used a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) to tell exactly where the missing atoms are in the material.