Application of Nanotechnology in Electronic Devices

17 March 2007

Nanomaterials are produced by two methods, the bottom up and top down. The bottom up method has been successfully used for self assembly by researchers through out the world. The bottom up method especially is therefore useful for ionic and electronic applications, however top down method plays a major role in research in many US universities and companies.

One of the important applications of nanotechnology is in advance architecture level of the Si-LSI technology. One method of constructing an electronic device is using bottom up method and combining it with top down method.

Many researchers has used bottom up method to fabricate a DRAM capacitor. DRAM comprises a pair of transistor and capacitor. Scientists at University of California have successfully fabricated a two-layered dielectric film. The dielectric film contains a self assembled monolayer and electrolyte. The redox reduction between SAM and electrolyte controls the capacitance and electromotive force within the dielectric film.

Flash memeory is another important application of nanotechnology. In conventional flash memory, a unit of single transistor is used. Highly integrated flash memory, a major non-volatile memory is in high demand for portable devices such as mobile phones. A floating gate stores the charge in the flash memory and these floating gates are being replaced by number of nanodots. These nanodots are non-continuous film and work smoothly even when the film contains certain amount of defects. So, the flash memory is far better than the conventional semiconductor memory.

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