Communications of the ACM
Engineer Unveils New Spin on Future of Transistors With Novel Design
Joseph S. Friedman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, conducted much of the research into the all-carbon spintronic switch while he was a doctoral student at Northwestern University.
Credit: UT Dallas News Center
Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have developed a computing system made exclusively from carbon which they think could replace the silicon transistor.
The all-carbon spintronic switch functions as a logic gate that relies on the magnetic field generated when an electric current moves through a wire. In addition, the UTD researchers say a magnetic field near a graphene nanoribbon affects the current flowing through the ribbon.
Transistors cannot exploit this phenomenon in silicon-based computers, but in the new spintronic circuit design, electrons moving through carbon nanotubes create a magnetic field that impacts the flow of current in a nearby graphene nanoribbon, providing cascaded logic gates that are not physically connected.
Since the communication between each of the graphene nanoribbons takes place via an electromagnetic wave, the researchers predict communication will be much faster, with the potential for terahertz clock speeds.
From UT Dallas News Center
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