Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
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SS PP EE CC II A
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QUANTUM COMPUTING
ATOM-SCALE ELECTRONICS
1
THE TR ANSISTOR
BIRTH OF AN ERA
MICHAEL RIORDAN AND LILLIAN HODDESON
When three Bell Labs researchers invented a replacement for the vacuum tube, the
world took little noticeat first. An excerpt from the book Crystal Fire.
THE TRANSISTOR
FRANK H. ROCKETT
From Scientific American, September 1948: this early detailed report on the significance
10
18
of the transistor noted that it may open up entirely new applications for electronics.
Scientific American The Solid-State Century (ISSN 1048-0943), Special Issue Volume 8, Number 1, 1997, published by Scientific American, Inc., 415 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017-
1111. Copyright 1997 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic or electronic process, or in the form
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62
So far industry has kept pace with the 30-year-old observation by Gordon E. Moore, father of
the microprocessor, that the density of integrated circuits grew geometrically. But even he
doesnt know how much longer that can last.
TACKLING TYRANNY 80
ALAN GOLDSTEIN
The tyranny of numbers described the showstopping problem of linking millions of micro-
components into a working machine. Then Jack Kilby hit on the idea of the integrated circuit.
3
other semiconductors have their uses, particularly for emitting light.
QUANTUM-MECHANICAL COMPUTERS 98
SETH LLOYD
The strange rules of quantum mechanics should make it possible to perform logical operations
using lasers and individual atoms, sometimes at unrivaled speeds.
P roving the adage that great things come in small packages, tran-
sistors have grown only more important as they have shrunk. At
the clunky stage of their early development, they seemed like
mere alternatives to vacuum tubes. Even so, they led inventors to design
more compact versions of radios and other conventional gadgets. When
agement by:
John Rennie, EDITOR IN CHIEF
tion and capability to build microelectronic devices for jobs that were Copy
Maria-Christina Keller, COPY CHIEF
not only once impossible but inconceivable. Today transistors and other Molly K. Frances; Daniel C. Schlenoff;
solid-state devices live inside telephones, automobiles, kitchen appli- Terrance Dolan; Katherine Wong;
William Stahl; Stephanie J. Arthur
ances, clothing, jewelry, toys and medical implants. This is the Informa-
tion Age not only because data processing is so common but because it is Administration
Rob Gaines, EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR
increasingly possible to cast all problems as matters of data manipula- Sonja Rosenzweig
tionto see the world as a frenzy of bits waiting to be tamed. Production
Three decades ago John Updike read an issue of Scientific American Richard Sasso, ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/
VICE PRESIDENT, PRODUCTION
on materials and wrote several verses, including this one: William Sherman, DIRECTOR, PRODUCTION
Janet Cermak, MANUFACTURING MANAGER
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Of Microstructure coarsely veiled until Madelyn Keyes, SYSTEMS MANAGER
Carl Cherebin, AD TRAFFIC; Norma Jones;
X-ray diffraction pierced the Crystal Planes Kelly Mercado
That roofed the giddy Dance, the taut Quadrille
Circulation
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Link Valencies, four-figured, hand in hand CIRCULATION DIRECTOR
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With tiny Excitations, quantitatively grand.
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6 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Copyright 1998 Scientific American, Inc.
Fif t y Years of Heroes
and Epiphanies
by Glenn Zorpette
DUSAN PETRICIC
H uman beings crave legends, heroes and
epiphanies. All three run through the his-
tory of solid-state electronics like special
effects in one of Hollywoods summer blockbusters.
To begin with, solid state has an exceptionally
lunch on Tuesday, De-
cember 23, 1947.
With the invention
of the integrated circuit
in 1958 came more
poignant creation myth. Just after World War II, epiphanies and new
John Bardeen, a shy, quiet genius from a Wisconsin heroes. Robert Noyce,
college town, and Walter Brattain, an ebullient, who died in 1990, and
talkative experimenter raised in the backwoods of Washing- Jack Kilby, who is profiled in this issue, separately conceived
ton State, assembled the most mundane of materialsa tiny of integrating multiple transistors into a single, tiny piece of
slab of germanium, some bits of gold foil, a paper clip and semiconductor material. As he recalls for interviewer Alan
some pieces of plasticinto a scraggly-looking gizmo. Un- Goldstein, Kilby nurtured his idea in a laboratory that he had
gainly as it was, the device was arguably one of the most to himself for a hot summer month while his colleagues were
beautiful things ever made. Every day of your life, you use all on vacation.
thousands, if not millions, of its descendants. By the mid-1960s another hero, Gordon Moore (also pro-
After Bardeen and Brattains achievement, their boss, the filed in this issue) noticed that the number of transistors that
patrician William Shockley, improved on the delicate original could be put on a chip was doubling every 12 months. (The
device, making it more rugged and suitable for mass manu- doubling period has since lengthened to nearly two years.)
facture. What the three of them invented 50 years ago at Bell Recently, however, some industry sagesincluding Moore
Telephone Laboratories was the transistor, the device that himselfhave begun openly speculating about when Moores
can switch an electric current on and off or take a minute Law may finally come to an end and about what the indus-
current and amplify it into a much greater one. From its try will be like after it does. In this issue, we take up the sub-
humble beginnings, the transistor has become the central, ject in several articles, including Technology and Economics
defining entity of the solid-state age, the ubiquitous sine qua in the Semiconductor Industry and Toward Point One.
non of just about every computer, data-handling appliance What it all comes down to, of course, are products. And
and power-amplifying circuit built since the 1960s. extrapolating from past trends in the solid-state arena, the
The Solid-State Century, as we have chosen to define it performance of some of them will truly astound. In Micro-
for this issue, extends from the work of Bardeen and compa- processors in 2020, David A. Patterson writes that it is not
ny 50 years ago through whatever wonders the next 50 will unreasonable to expect that two decades from now, a single
surely bring. So far the first five decades have delivered not desktop computer will be as powerful as all the computers in
only the transistor but also the integrated circuit, in which Silicon Valley today.
millions of transistors are fabricated on tiny slivers of silicon; At the 50-year mark, the solid-state age has yet to show
power transistors that can switch enormous flows of electric any sign of languor or dissipation in any of its categories. In
current; and optoelectronics, a huge category in its own right microelectronics, chips with 10 million transistors are about
that includes the semiconductor lasers and detectors used in to become available. In power electronics, a new type of de-
telecommunications and compact-disc systems. vice, the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is revolu-
In an attempt to impose order on such a mlange of mar- tionizing the entire field. In optoelectronics, astonishing de-
vels, we have divided this issue into three sections. The first vices that exploit quantum effects are beginning to dominate.
covers devicesthe transistor, semiconductor lasers and so on. And it may not be too soon to identify a few new candidates
Section two focuses on the integrated circuit. Section three for hero statuspeople such as the quantum-well wizard Fed-
describes some intriguing possibilities for the near future of erico Capasso of Lucent Technologies (which includes Bell
electronics, especially in microprocessors and computers. Labs) and B. Jayant Baliga, the inventor of the IGBT, who
In the first section we start with the chilly, overcast after- describes his transistor in this issue. As we pass the halfway
noon when Bardeen and Brattain demonstrated their germa- point in the solid-state century, it is clear that the cavalcade of
nium-and-foil whatsit to suitably impressed executives at Bell legends, heroes and epiphanies is nowhere near over yet. SA
Labs. Lets take a little license and say that the solid-state age
was born right there and then, in Murray Hill, N.J., just after GLENN ZORPETTE is project editor for this special issue.
Fifty Years of Heroes and Epiphanies Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 7
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
1 The Transistor
Copyright 1998 Scientific American, Inc. Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 9
In December 1947 three researchers
demonstrated a device that would change
the way humankind works and plays
BIRTH OF AN ERA
by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson
AT&T ARCHIVES
in a variety of ways. Shown
here are point-contact transis-
tors (first two photographs from
left). The point-contact dates to
1948 and was essentially a pack-
aged version of the original de-
vice demonstrated in 1947.
Models from the late 1950s in-
cluded the grown junction tran-
sistor (second photograph from
right) and the diffused base
transistor (far right).
In the weeks that followed, however, Kelly, then Bells research director, Shock- differentand successfulway to make
Shockley was torn by conflicting emo- ley began seeking ways to fashion a such an amplifier.
tions. The invention of the transistor, as rugged solid-state device to replace the Their invention quickly spurred Shock-
Bardeen and Brattains solid-state am- balky, unreliable switches and amplifiers ley into a bout of feverish activity. Galled
plifier soon came to be called, had been commonly used in phone equipment. His at being upstaged, he could think of lit-
a magnificent Christmas present for familiarity with the weird quantum tle else besides semiconductors for over
his group and especially for Bell Labs, world gave him a decided advantage in a month. Almost every moment of free
which had staunchly supported their ba- this quest. In late 1939 he thought he time he spent on trying to design an even
sic research program. But he was cha- had come up with a good ideato stick better solid-state amplifier, one that
grined to have had no direct role in this a tiny bit of weathered copper screen in- would be easier to manufacture and use.
crucial breakthrough. My elation with side a piece of semiconductor. Although Instead of whooping it up with other
the groups success was tempered by skeptical, Brattain helped him build this scientists and engineers while attending
not being one of the inventors, he re- crude device early the next year. It proved two conferences in Chicago, he spent
called many years later. I experienced a complete failure. New Years Eve cooped up in his hotel
frustration that my personal efforts, Far better insight into the subtleties room with a pad and a few pencils,
started more than eight years before, working into the early-morning hours
had not resulted in a significant inven- Shockleys elation on yet another of his ideas.
tive contribution of my own. By late January 1948 Shockley had
was tempered figured out the important details of his
Wonderland World own design, filling page after page of his
by not being one lab notebook. His approach would use
JASON GOLTZ
vacuum tubes that took a minute or so the nerve cell of the Information Age.
to warm up before anything could hap- Hardly a unit of electronic equipment
pen. In 1954 the transistor was largely
perceived as an expensive laboratory cu-
riosity with only a few specialized ap-
plications, such as hearing aids and mil-
itary communications.
But that year things started to change
dramatically. A small, innovative Dallas
company began producing junction
transistors for portable radios, which
ARCHIVE/HERBERT
ARCHIVE PHOTOS
a far smaller and more inti-
mate place than ever before.
began, slowly spelling out the name, Perhaps too much other news was
because it is a resistor or semiconduc- breaking that sultry Thursday morning.
tor device which can amplify electrical Turnstiles on the New York subway
signals as they are transferred through system, which until midnight had al-
it. Comparing it to the bulky vacuum ways droned to the dull clatter of nick-
tubes that served this purpose in virtu- News of Radio. After noting that Our els, now marched only to the music of
ally every electrical circuit of the day, he Miss Brooks would replace the regular dimes. Subway commuters responded
told reporters that the transistor could CBS Monday-evening program Radio with resignation. Idlewild Airport had
accomplish the very same feats and do Theatre that summer, they devoted a opened for business the previous day in
them much better, wasting far less power. few paragraphs to the new amplifier. the swampy meadowlands just east of
But the press paid little attention to A device called a transistor, which Brooklyn, supplanting La Guardia as
the small cylinder with two flimsy wires has several applications in radio where New Yorks principal destination for
poking out of it that was being demon- a vacuum tube ordinarily is employed, international flights. And the hated
strated by Bown and his staff that swel- was demonstrated for the first time yes- Boston Red Sox had beaten the world
tering summer day. None of the report- terday at Bell Telephone Laboratories, champion Yankees 7 to 3.
ers suspected that the physical process began the piece, noting that it had been Earlier that week the gathering clouds
silently going on inside this innocuous- employed in a radio receiver, a telephone of the cold war had darkened dramati-
looking metal tube, hardly bigger than system and a television set. In the shape cally over Europe after Soviet occupa-
the rubber erasers on the ends of their of a small metal cylinder about a half- tion forces in eastern Germany refused
pencils, would utterly transform their inch long, the transistor contains no to allow Allied convoys to carry any
world. vacuum, grid, plate or glass envelope to more supplies into West Berlin. The U.S.
Editors at the New York Times were keep the air away, the column contin- and Britain responded to this blockade
intrigued enough to mention the break- ued. Its action is instantaneous, there with a massive airlift. Hundreds of
through in the July 1 issue, but they being no warm-up delay since no heat transport planes brought the thousands
buried the story on page 46 in The is developed as in a vacuum tube. of tons of food and fuel needed daily by
The Authors
MICHAEL RIORDAN and LILLIAN HODDESON are co-au- Technology and is co-author of The Solar Home Book and The Hunt-
thors of Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age. Riordan is ing of the Quark. Hoddeson, an associate professor of history at the
the assistant to the director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is co-author of The
and a research physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Birth of Particle Physics and co-author, with Vicki Daitch, of the
He holds two degrees in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of forthcoming Gentle Genius: The Life and Science of John Bardeen.
Further Reading
The Path to the Conception of the Junction Transistor. gy. Edited by technical staff, AT&T Bell Laboratories. AT&T
William Shockley in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Vol. Bell Laboratories, 1983.
ED-23, No. 7, pages 597620; July 1976. The Origin, Development, and Personality of Microelec-
Revolution in Miniature: The History and Impact of Semi- tronics. R. M. Warner in Transistors: Fundamentals for the Inte-
conductor Electronics. Ernest Braun and Stuart MacDonald. grated-Circuit Engineer. John Wiley & Sons, 1983.
Cambridge University Press, 1978. Engineers and Electrons. John D. Ryder and Donald G. Fink.
An Age of Innovation: The World of Electronics IEEE Press, 1984.
19302000. The editors of Electronics magazine. McGraw-Hill, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technolog-
1981. ical Enthusiasm. Thomas P. Hughes. Penguin Books, 1990.
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System, Crystals, Electrons and Transistors. Michael Eckert and Hel-
Vol. 4: Physical Sciences and Vol. 6: Electronics Technolo- mut Shubert. AIP Press, 1990.
Whats Inside
a Computer
T he average midrange personal computer generally
contains between 50 and 75 integrated circuits,
better known as chips. The most complex of these
chips is the microprocessor, which executes a stream of
instructions that operate on data. The microprocessor
(2) STEP AND REPEAT
SILICON
RETICLE SUBSTRATE
(OR MASK)
(1)Integrated circuits are made by creating
and interconnecting thousands or millions of transistors on
a thin piece of silicon. The heart of the fabrication process is based on
(6)
WORKING
a cycle of steps carried out 20 or more times for a complex chip. Each cycle TRANSISTOR
starts with a different pattern, which is known as a mask. (2)Ultraviolet light pro-
jects this pattern repeatedly onto the wafer, which consists of a silicon substrate under
oxide and nitride layers. These layers will be needed to make transistors. Above them is
placed a coating of a photosensitive substance known as photoresist. In each place where the
LENS image falls, a chip will be made. (3)After being exposed, the photoresist is developed, which
delineates the spaces where the different conducting layers interconnect. The parts of the
photosensitive layer that had been exposed to the light are then removed. (4)Gases etch
these exposed parts of the wafer. (5) Transistors are created when ions shower the
exposed areas, doping them to create the positive- or negative-type semi-
conductor materials on which transistors are based. (6)Later steps
put down the layers of metal and insulator that connect
(5)
DOPING
the transistors into a circuit.
(4) ETCHING
SOURCE
N-CHANNEL
GATE
(METAL)
INSULATOR
ELECTRON
HOLE DRAIN
CMOS (ON)
(6)
DOPING
How a CMOS
Transistor Works
T he transistors in an integrated circuit are of a type known as comple-
mentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). They have two regions,
the source and the drain, that have an abundance of electrons and are
therefore referred to as n (for negative) type. In between the source and
drain is a p- (positive) type region, with a surplus of electron deficiencies
(called holes).
On top of the substrate, which is made of a silicon semiconductor materi-
al, is an insulating layer of silicon dioxide; on top of this oxide layer is a
metal gate. (Hence the name metal oxide semiconductor.) When a pos-
itive voltage is applied to the metal gate, an electrical field is set up that pen-
etrates through the insulator and into the substrate. This field attracts elec-
trons toward the surface of the substrate, just below the insulator, allowing
current to flow between the source and the drain.
JOHN R. DEECKEN
DIMENSION
CURRENT
ZERO RESONANT VALLEY
20 NANOMETERS VOLTAGE VOLTAGE VOLTAGE
DENSITY OF STATES
ENERGY
ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY ENERGY ZERO VOLTAGE RESONANT VOLTAGE VALLEY VOLTAGE
levels. Through clever materials design, and a quantum-well laser is in the rela- The difficulty of building useful quan-
these electrons can be induced to jump tive size of each devices active region, tum wires and dots has been sobering,
from one energy level to another in an where electrons and holes (electron after the intoxicating rush of advances in
organized way, causing them to per- deficiencies) recombine, neutralizing quantum devices in the 1980s and early
form another useful tricktypically, one another and causing a photon to be 1990s. Researchers in those days envi-
emitting or detecting photons of light. emitted. The quantum-well lasers ac- sioned two different classes of quantum
tive region is small enough for the ener- devices: quantum optical devices, such
Wells, Wires and Dots gy levels of the electrons in the well to as lasers and light detectors, and quan-
become quantizedthat is, constricted tum electron devices, such as diodes and
breakthrough that fundamentally chang- tum dots, in which the infinitesimal de- terialtypically a crystalline semiconduc-
es things. But Im pessimistic, frankly. vices sprout up as clumps on the surface tor filled with low-energy electronsbe-
So, too, apparently, were IBM, Bell of a semiconductor layer being grown tween two slices of semiconductor crys-
Communications Research (Bellcore) with a technology known as molecular- tals with higher-energy electrons. Any
and Philips, all of which either aban- beam epitaxy, the standard fabrication electrons in the lower-energy slice will
doned quantum devices or severely cur- technique used to make quantum devic- be confined, unable to traverse the in-
tailed their research programs in the es. And though hopes are fading for a terface, or barrier, between the two dif-
mid-1990s. Nevertheless, in Japan, re- commercially useful quantum-dot elec- ferent semiconductor crystals if the bar-
search into these devices continues un- tron device in the near future, many re- rier is sufficiently thick. The interface
abated at large electronics firms and at searchers in academia are increasingly where the two crystals meet is known
many universities. A few U.S. and Euro- enthusiastic about quantum devices in as a heterojunction. One of the few dis-
pean academic institutions also continue which the electrons are contained by in- appointing characteristics of silicon as a
to explore quantum-electron devices. dividual molecules, rather than semi- semiconductor material is that it does
Yet even as work on these devices has conductor structures such as dots. not emit light. So quantum-device build-
stalled, enthusiasm is high for quantum ers use other, more exotic semiconduc-
optical devices, thanks to the quantum- A Weird, Wonderful World tors, such as gallium arsenide and its
well lasers, the quantum-cascade laser many more complex compounds.
and a few other encouraging develop-
ments. Besides Lucentwhich was re-
cently spun off from AT&TPhilips,
T o build a lower-dimensional mate-
rial deliberately, researchers must
pay court to quantum mechanics. In
The energy of electrons in semiconduc-
tor crystals is described by band theory.
When atoms are packed together to
Thomson-CSF and Siemens have active any 3-D, bulk semiconductor, electrons form a crystal, their energy levels merge
research efforts. Many of those groups, take on a nearly continuous range of to form bands of energy. Of particular
including the one at Lucents Bell Labs, different energy states when additional interest are electrons in the valence band,
hope to use such highly efficient, tiny energy is added to the material by ap- because these electrons determine some
quantum-well lasers to transmit data plying voltage. As a result, researchers of the materials properties, especially
more efficiently and at higher rates cannot tap a specific energy level; they chemical ones. Valence electrons do not
through optical-fiber networks. One must accept what they get. contribute to current flow, because they
promising project at Lucent centers on Squeezing one side of a 3-D cube un- are fairly tightly held to atoms. To con-
a quantum-wire laser that promises low- til it is no thicker than an electrons duct electricity, electrons must be in a
er-current operation. This laser would wavelength traps electrons in a 2-D higher-energy band known as the con-
be desirable in a variety of applications, plane. In two dimensions, the so-called duction band. In metals, many of the
such as optical communications, be- density of electron statesthe energy electrons normally occupy this band, en-
cause its low-current operation would levels electrons can occupybecomes abling them to conduct electric current.
enable the use of a smaller, less costly quantized. Electrons jump from one en- A semiconductor, on the other hand,
power supply. ergy level to another in a steplike fash- can be made to conduct substantial elec-
And although experimentation with ion. After determining what layer thick- tric current by introducing impurities,
quantum electron devices and quantum ness induces what energy level, workers called dopants, that deposit electrons
dots may be down, it is certainly not out. can design the precise electronic charac- into the conduction band. Electrons
Scientists at NTT Optoelectronics Lab- teristics of a material. can also be introduced into the conduc-
oratories in Japan, the University of Cal- Electrons are not really confined by tion band of a semiconductor by shin-
ifornia at Santa Barbara, the University physical barriers; instead researchers ing light into the crystal, which prods
of Southern California, Stanford Uni- must erect barriers of energy. Like water electrons from the valence band into
versity and the Paul Drude Institute in going downhill, electrons tend toward the conduction band. The photocurrent
Berlin have begun investigating an in- low-energy areas. So to trap electrons, generated in this way is exploited in all
triguing new method of creating quan- investigators need only sandwich a ma- semiconductor light detectors, such as
those in light-wave communications. these cells, then shot down the passages blesome was preventing contamination
Alternatively, electrons can be inject- toward a substrate. By programming the of the substrate, the material backing
ed into the conduction band by a volt- shutters between the passages and the on which the thin layers would be de-
age applied to electrical contacts at the vacuum chamber, scientists can dictate posited, in order to ensure a perfect
surface of the crystal. Boosted to the the thickness of the layers deposited on meshing of the two different semicon-
conduction band, the electrons are able the substrate, which is typically made of ductor crystal lattices at the heterojunc-
to take part in interesting phenomena, gallium arsenide or indium phosphide. tion where they met.
such as falling back to the valence band Cho has likened the technique to spray In 1974 the researchers finally tri-
where they recombine with holes to painting atoms onto a substrate. The umphed. The IBM team passed a cur-
produce photons of light. aim of both groups was to create a rent through a sequence of several quan-
The energy needed to propel an elec- quantum well, which is made by de- tum wells and observed peaks in the cur-
tron from the valence to the conduction positing a very thin layer of lower-band- rent as the voltage was increased. These
band is the band-gap energy, which is gap semiconductor between layers of peaks were caused by variations in the
simply the energy difference, typically higher-band-gap material. alignment of the energy levels in adja-
measured in electron volts, between At IBM, also using MBE, Esaki, Tsu cent quantum wells and indicated that
those two bands. Some semiconductors and Chang began by alternating multi- quantum confinement was occurring. At
have higher- or lower-band-gap ener- ple layers of gallium arsenide with lay- around the same time, Raymond Din-
gies than others. Insulators, which re- ers of aluminum gallium arsenide, a gle, Arthur Gossard and William Wieg-
quire tremendous energy to push their higher-band-gap compound. At about mann of Bell Labs built several isolated
valence electrons to the higher-energy the same time, their counterparts at Bell quantum wells, shone laser light on
bands, have the largest band gaps. Labs aimed to create a quantum well in them and found that they absorbed dif-
Scientists first began attempting to a simpler way by sandwiching one thin, ferent, but predicted, frequencies of
exploit these principles to build quan- low-band-gap material between two lightan alternative indication of quan-
tum electronics devices in the late 1960s. higher-band-gap materials, thereby pro- tum confinement. Soon thereafter, Esa-
Thus, the era of quantum devices can be ducing a quantum well. The idea was ki and Chang of IBM built the first real
said to have begun 30 years ago, when to trap electrons in the lower-band-gap quantum-well devicea resonant tun-
Leo Esaki, Leroy L. Chang and Raph- semiconductorgallium arsenide, for neling diode. As its name implies, the
ael Tsu of the IBM Thomas J. Watson example, which has a band-gap energy diode exploited tunneling, one of the
Research Center in Yorktown Heights, of 1.5 electron volts. The electrons would most intriguing of quantum effects.
N.Y., began trying to build structures be unable to cross the heterojunction To understand tunneling, consider the
that would trap electrons in dimension- barrier into the layers of aluminum gal- classic quantum well described above.
ally limited environments. Confine an lium arsenide, which has a band gap of Typically, electrons are trapped between
electron in two dimensions, Chang de- 3.1 electron volts. If the gallium arsen- two high-band-gap semiconductors in
clared, and it changes everything. ide layerthe actual quantum well the lower-band-gap, 2-D well between
It was the invention of molecular-beam were just tens of atomic layers wide, two relatively thick, high-band-gap semi-
epitaxy (MBE) at Bell Labs by Alfred Y. quantum effects would be observed. conductor barriers. If the barriers are
Cho and John Arthur in the late 1960s There was no arguing with the sci- made sufficiently thin, a few nanometers,
that finally moved quantum research ence, but at the time, it was ahead of the say, the laws of quantum mechanics in-
from the theoretical to the practical ability of the new MBE technology to dicate that an electron has a substantial
realm. At the heart of an MBE machine exploit it. Efforts of both the IBM and probability of passing throughthat is,
is an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber, which AT&T groups bogged down in fabrica- tunneling throughthe high-band-gap
allows workers to deposit layers of at- tion problems. For one, how do you lay barriers.
oms as thin as 0.2 nanometer on a heat- down an even layer of material a few Consider now an empty quantum
ed semiconductor substrate. Attached atoms deep? We had to build a vacuum well, surrounded by such ultrathin bar-
to the vacuum chamber, like spokes on system ourselves to deposit the ultra- riers. The whole structure, consisting of
a hub, are three or four passages that thin layers, says Chang, now dean of barriers and well, is sandwiched between
lead to effusion cells. Elements such as science at the Hong Kong University of electrically conductive contact layers.
gallium or aluminum are vaporized in Science and Technology. Equally trou- The trick is to apply just the right volt-
age to the contact layers, so that the en- culesof pollutants or contaminants, they drop down to a lower energy state,
ergy of the electrons entering the quan- for instancein the air. E1. To achieve laser action, two condi-
tum well matches the energy level of the All such molecules absorb electromag- tions have to be satisfied. First, the high-
well itself. In this resonant tunneling netic radiation at unique, characteristic er energy level, E2, must have a larger
phenomenon, many of the entering and very specific frequencies. And many number of electrons than the lower one,
electrons will tunnel through the barri- of these wavelengths, it so happens, are E1. This state, known as a population
ers, giving rise to a high current. in the mid- and far-infrared range. So inversion, ensures that light is amplified
This passage of electrons can be ex- by tuning a laser, such as the quantum rather than attenuated.
ploited in various ways. Electrons can cascade, to the appropriate wavelength, The second requirement for laser ac-
be caused to tunnel from one quantum shining the beam through air and mea- tion is that the semiconductor material
well to another in a complex device, suring the amount of radiation absorbed, in which the photons are being generat-
which has many quantum wells. (Bell researchers could detect the presence ed must be placed between two partial-
Labss quantum-cascade laser is such a and concentration of a certain molecule ly transparent mirrors. This placement
device.) Alternatively, the tunneling can in the air. Environmentalists could use allows photons generated by electrons
be the end result in itself, if the device is such a laser to monitor the emissions jumping from E2 to E1 to be reflected
a diode or transistor, and the point is to from a smokestack or from the tailpipe back and forth between the mirrors.
have current flow. of an automobile. Semiconductor spe- Each time these photons traverse the
cialists could use it to check the cleanli- material, they stimulate more electrons
Material Marvel ness of a processing line, in which even to jump from E2 to E1, emitting yet
a few stray molecules can render a chip more photons, leading to laser action
(hence the acronym: light amplification
A lthough tunneling has so far proved
a bust in the world of quantum-
electron devices, its utility in optical de-
useless. Law-enforcement and security
officials could check for smuggled drugs
or explosives. With sufficient power,
by stimulated emission of radiation). In
a conventional semiconductor laser and
vices has been ratified by the quantum- such a laser might even be used on mili- also in the QC laser, the mirrors are
cascade laser, a material marvel. The QC tary jets, to blind or fool hostile built into the laser material. These per-
laser, as it is known, is the first semicon- heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. (In fectly smooth and reflecting facets are
ductor laser that does not exploit re- fact, a significant part of the current obtained by cleaving the semiconductor
combinations of holes and electrons to funding for the quantum-cascade laser bar along crystalline planes.
produce photons and whose wave- is coming from the Defense Advanced Maintaining a population inversion
length, therefore, is completely deter- Research Projects Agency.) demands that electrons be cleared away
mined by an artificial structurename- The laser culminates more than a from the lower energy level, E 1. To do
ly, the dimensions of a quantum well. It decade of tenacious pursuit by Lucents this requires yet another level, E0, to
is also the most powerful mid-infrared Capasso, who at times was nearly alone which the electrons can be deposited af-
semiconductor laser by far and the first in the conviction that it could be built. ter they have served their purpose. In the
that works at room temperature. I told Federico in the mid-1980s that quantum-cascade laser, these three en-
With respect to laser radiation, the it couldnt work, Yales Reed says. Im ergy levels are engineered into a series of
mid- and far-infrared regions have been happy to be proved wrong. active regions, each consisting of three
a barren land, where the few available The fundamental requirement of a quantum wells. But there is not a one-to-
semiconductor lasers are generally weak, laser, regardless of its type, is to maintain one correspondence between the three
cumbersome or constrained to narrow a large number, or population, of energy levels and the three wells; rather
frequency bands. This lack of adequate electrons in an excited state. The elec- the energy levels can be thought of as
mid- and far-infrared lasers has preclud- trons are promoted to this excited state, existing across all three wells. Some ex-
ed the development of an entire class of which well call E2, by applying energy tremely intricate materials processing
spectroscopic devices capable of mea- from some external source. These elec- enables electrons to tunnel easily from
suring minute concentrations of mole- trons emit a photon of radiation when one well to the next. It is this strong
APPLICATIONS of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) movement of robotic arms demands superior motor controls.
encompass a diverse group: steam irons, telephone-system cen- The device itself consists of a sliver of silicon encased in plastic
tral office switches, electric cars and high-speed trains. IGBTs (upper left inset photograph). The transistors capabilities are
are particularly attractive in factory automation, because precise impressive: IGBTs are available that can switch 1,000 amperes.
nected together to control the power household in a developed country has amplitude of the sine wave that is ap-
applied to electric motors. been estimated to have over 40 electric plied to the motors windings. With this
Electric-motor controls are a major motors, in appliances such as blenders, type of control system, which is known
business, with applications in both in- power tools, washers and dryers and in as an adjustable-speed drive, the mo-
dustry and the home. Factories, for ex- the compressors of refrigerators, freez- tors rotor turns with the same frequen-
ample, generally rely heavily on motor- ers and air conditioners. Essentially all cy as the sine wave. Groups of IGBTs
driven machinery, equipment or robots. electric cars built within the past few can be used to create this sine wave by
Electrically powered streetcars and years also rely heavily on IGBTs. putting out pulses of precisely con-
trains, too, need motor controls. The The speed and power of most modern trolled duration and amplitude. Be-
motors in Japans famous Shinkansen alternating-current motors, whether the cause IGBTs can be switched on and off
bullet trains, for example, are now con- motor is in a blender or a bullet train, so rapidly, they can produce a compar-
trolled by IGBTs. And the average are varied by altering the frequency and atively smooth sine wave. This smooth-
ELECTRON
HOLE P-TYPE SUBSTRATE N-CHANNEL
(SEMICONDUCTOR) IS FORMED
P-TYPE
COLLECTOR
P-TYPE
EMITTER
N-TYPE
BASE
MOSFET AND BIPOLAR TRANSISTORS are combined to same time, it attracts electrons, forming between the source and
create an IGBT, a rugged, high-power device. In the metal oxide the drain a so-called n-channel, through which a working cur-
semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOSFET, current flow rent flows. In the p-n-p bipolar transistor, a relatively small con-
is enabled by the application of a voltage to a metal gate. The trol current adds electrons to the base, attracting holes from the
voltage sets up an electrical field that repels positively charged emitter. These holes flow from the emitter to the collector, con-
electron deficiencies, known as holes, away from the gate. At the stituting a relatively large working current. In the IGBT, a con-
ness in turn keeps the motor from gen- easily have a frequency above the range to regulate the power that surges through
erating excessive harmonics, which are of human hearing. Thus, IGBTs can be these gas-filled tubes, breaking down
stray sine waves with frequencies that used to build completely silent com- the gass electrical resistance and caus-
are higher by a factor of two, three, pressors for air conditioners, refriger- ing it to emit electromagnetic radiation.
four and so on. Harmonics create heat, ators and the like. That hum that comes All told, power-electronics devices,
waste energy and can damage the mo- from most compressors is caused by including IGBTs, control an estimated
tor or other equipment on the circuit. slower power-electronics devices, which 50 to 60 percent of the electrical power
Before IGBTs, the motors used in, for can be switched on and off only at fre- generated in industrial countries. More-
example, heating, ventilating and air- quencies within the range of hearing. over, this percentage is growing, thanks
conditioning (HVAC) units were typi- IGBTs can do a lot more than control mostly to the success of IGBTs.
cally run at constant speed and merely motors. Some companies are now using As these devices begin dominating ma-
turned on and off at different intervals to them in the latest laptop-computer dis- jor parts of power electronics, they are
accommodate changes in ambient tem- plays, to turn picture elements on and finally uniting the two electronic revo-
perature. Efficiency under slack loads off. Telephone equipment manufactur- lutions that began half a century ago.
was poor. Adjustable-speed drives based ers are incorporating them into central IGBTs can use an electric current of just
on IGBTs offer far superior efficiency, office switches, to route signals by con- a few thousandths of an ampere to con-
which has been estimated to save mil- necting different circuits and also to ac- trol flows of, say, 100 amperes at 1,500
lions of barrels of oil every day, which tivate the circuit that sends the signal volts. And their ability to be controlled
also reduces pollution. These efficient that rings a telephone. One company by such minute currents enables IGBTs
HVAC controls have already been wide- has even used IGBTs to produce an ad- to be fabricated on the same semicon-
ly adapted in Japan and are increasing- vanced defibrillator, a lifesaving device ductor chip with the circuits that permit
ly popular in Europe and in the U.S. that delivers an electric shock to restart the IGBT to be controlled by micropro-
Another advantage of IGBTs stems the heart of a victim of cardiac arrest. cessors. To draw an analogy to physiol-
from their switching speeds: they are so IGBTs are also being used in the ballasts ogy, if the microprocessor and its asso-
fast that the pulses they generate can of fluorescent and arc-discharge lights, ciated memory chips are like the brain,
BIPOLAR
BIPOLAR WORKING
COLLECTOR CURRENT
MOSFET
MOSFET
SUBSTRATE
IGBT
BIPOLAR
WORKING
BASE
MOSFET CURRENT
SOURCE
BIPOLAR
EMITTER
TERMINAL
trol voltage is applied to a MOSFET. It establishes a working the combined working currents of both the MOSFET and the
current, which in turn is appliedas a control currentto the bipolar. This ingenious configuration enables the devices to have
base of a p-n-p bipolar. This control current enables a larger a power gainthe ratio of the working current and voltage to
working current to flow in the bipolar. Because of the arrange- the control current and voltageof about 10 million. Such gain
ment of its components, the IGBTs working current is actually enables the devices to connect to microelectronic circuits.
IGBTs can be thought of as the muscles. and 500 volts. Current flows are rela- amperes. Such high-power IGBTs are
ever before have brains and brawn tively small (less than 10 amperes), so now controlling the motors of Japans
been so intimately connected. there is a strong thrust toward putting bullet trains, among other things.
the power-switching devices and the
Fluorescent Lights to Bullet Trains microelectronics that control them on Best of Both Worlds
the same chip.
TIMOTHY ARCHIBALD
specified temperature, current capacity
or voltage level.
Another attribute of the IGBT is its
significantly higher operating current
density in the on state when compared
CENTRIFUGAL DOME holds eight silicon wafers, each of which will yield roughly with its two components, the bipolar
320 IGBTs. In a vacuum chamber, precious metals are sputtered onto the back of the
transistor and the MOSFET. Recall that
wafers to produce the conductive components of each device. The assembly was pho-
tographed at Motorolas MOS 4 power-transistor fabrication facility in Phoenix, Ariz. the current flowing in the channel of the
MOSFET is used as the input, or con-
trol, current for the bipolar. Because of
deliver a pulse of current from a capac- off state, the device must be able to sup- the way the two transistors are integrat-
itor to, for example, a gas discharge tube port a high voltage across its output ed together, the output current of the
of the kind used in photolithography terminals, the emitter and the collector. IGBT consists not just of the bipolars
tools. Engineers continue to work on In a conventional power transistor, this emitter-collector current, as might be
MOS-gated thyristors in hopes of pro- requirement is satisfied by making the expected, but of the sum of that current
ducing a device capable of replacing a collector thick and lightly doped. But a and the channel current in the MOSFET.
kind of thyristor, known as a gate-turn- thick collector and a thin base were These two currents are roughly equal
off thyristor, commonly used in the high- found to be impractical in the IGBT for (the gain of the bipolar is only about one
est power applications. reasons having to do with chip fabrica- or two), so the output current of the
In an IGBT, there is just one useful tion and performance limitations. IGBT is approximately twice that of ei-
bipolar transistor (as opposed to the pair Fortunately, it is a fact that the voltage ther of its components.
that comprise a thyristor), and it is a p- in a power transistor can be blocked by Another important feature that en-
n-p type. This p-n-p transistor is a rather making either the base or the collector hances the efficiency of the IGBT is its
unusual one in several respects. For one, thick and lightly doped. The reason the unusually low electrical resistance, in
the typical, commonly available bipolar collector is invariably made thick in a the on state, between its emitter and
power transistor is an n-p-n, not a p-n- conventional power transistor is that collector. This property comes from the
p. Moreover, the typical power transis- high current gain demands a thin, highly large concentration of electrons and
tor has a narrow base region and a thick, doped base. holes that are injected into the bipolars
lightly doped collector. As mentioned be- But what if we do not care about cur- wide, lightly doped base region from
fore, the thin base enables large currents rent gain in the bipolar transistor? I re- the adjacent emitter and collector dur-
to flow through it in the on state, where- alized that this is precisely the case with ing current flow. This flooding of charge
as the thick, lightly doped collector the IGBT, because it is the MOSFET, carriers increases the bases conductivi-
blocks current in the off state. with its huge current gain, that provides ty 1,000 times. Therefore, the power
In the p-n-p transistor in an IGBT, on the control current to the bipolar tran- losses inside the device are exceptionally
the other hand, the characteristics of base sistor. In other words, the two parts of low in comparison with ordinary MOS-
and collector are reversed: the base is an IGBT are integrated together in such FETs or even bipolars. For any particu-
thick and lightly doped; the collector is a way that the channel current flowing lar application, this feature translates
relatively thin and very highly doped. in the substrate of the MOSFET is also into a proportionate reduction in chip
How is this reversal possible? Think the current that is applied to the base of area, which in turn leads to a substan-
back to the key requirements of a power the bipolar power transistor. Thus, so tial reduction in the cost for manufac-
semiconductor device. One is that in the much current is being provided to the turing the device.
The Author
B. JAYANT BALIGA is director of North Carolina State Universi- ment Center in Schenectady, N.Y. He has been a professor of electri-
tys Power Semiconductor Research Center, which he founded in cal engineering at North Carolina State since 1988. His current re-
1991. From 1979 to 1988 he was manager of power-device devel- search interest lies in developing silicon and silicon-carbide-based
opment at the General Electric Corporate Research and Develop- power semiconductor devices.
Further Reading
Evolution of MOS-Bipolar Power Semiconductor Tech- Power Semiconductor Devices. B. Jayant Baliga. PWS Publish-
nology. B. Jayant Baliga in Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 76, ing, Boston, 1996.
No. 4, pages 409418; April 1988. Trends in Power Semiconductor Devices. B. Jayant Baliga in a
Power ICs in the Saddle. B. Jayant Baliga in IEEE Spectrum, special issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, Vol. 43,
Vol. 32, No. 7, pages 3449; July 1995. No. 10, pages 17171731; October 1996.
some very
interesting
strongholds
P assion and cult arent words one nor-
mally associates with electrical engi-
neering, but they do come into play the
minute tubes are mentioned.
Vacuum tubes, that is to say. Audio tubes, to be
Although the evidence today seems to suggest
that DeForest had only a slight appreciation of
what he had wrought, after much experimenta-
tion, Armstrong did. In a seminal moment in elec-
tronics history, he coupled the tubes output cir-
precise. cuit back to its input to boost its feeble gain,
For the uninitiated, which you almost certainly thereby inventing the positive feedback circuit.
are if youre younger than 40 years of age, vacu- Over time, thousands of different tubes were
um tubes were the active electronic devices used developed, from subminiature devices the size of
by primitive peoples before transistors and inte- a cigarette filter to the hefty units still used in
grated circuits were invented. In fact, in the early high-power radio transmitters, radar and indus-
part of this century, the very word electronics trial heating equipment. In addition to triodes,
referred to a branch of physics concerned with engineers came up with tetrodes, pentodes and
the behavior of electrons in a vacuum. other tubes with multiple-grid electrodes.
Devised in 1904 by John Ambrose Fleming, the Small receiving tubes, of the kind found in
first tubes (or valves, as the British tabletop radios by the millions between about
call them) were simple diodes, 1920 and 1960, have now been almost complete-
which permitted electric current ly displaced by transistors, which seem to last for-
to flow in only one direction. ever. They require neither high voltages nor
Electronics really took off around warm-up time, lend themselves to real miniatur-
1912, when Edwin Howard Arm- ization and use far less power.
strong figured out how to build
useful amplifier and oscillator cir- Pleasure and Passion
cuits with the audion tube, in-
vented six years earlier by Lee De o pervasive have transistors become that few
Forest. By inserting an electrode
known as a grid between the di-
S people today even think about tubes in the
context of home audio equipment. There exists,
odes other two electrodes, known however, a small but passionate minority that be-
as the cathode and anode, De lieves that the best transistor-based amplifiers
Forest created a controllable de- cannot re-create a piece of music as pleasingly as
vice in which small changes in can a properly designed amplifier built around
the voltage on the grid resulted vacuum triodes. Pleasing, of course, is a subjec-
in larger changes in the current tive word, and that is where the passion comes in.
flowing between the cathode As explained by Kevin M. Hayes, founder and
and the anode. Such a three- president of Valve Amplification Company in
electrode tube is called a triode. Durham, N.C., a manufacturer of tube-based au-
dio amplifiers, the case for tubes begins with the
realization that industry-standard laboratory
RADIO-FREQUENCY measurements of amplifier performance do not
TRANSMITTING TUBES adequately answer fundamentally subjective
such as the 845 (left) and the questions such as Is this amplifier better than
811A (above, right) were used that one? The problem, he says, is that the work-
as power-amplifying devices in ings of the ear and brain are not understood well
1940s-era amateur radio and enough to identify the necessary and sufficient
broadcast transmitters. In the
set of measurements for answering the question.
Back in the 1930s and 1940s, total harmonic
811A, as in many transmitting
distortion became a widely accepted parameter
types, a high, direct-current for describing amplifier imperfections. All ampli-
voltage is applied through a fiers create spurious, ostensibly unwanted signals
plate cap on top of the tube at frequencies that are some whole-number mul-
and modulated inside the tube tiple of the signal being amplified. Thus, a second-
by an input signal. order harmonic distortion consists of stray signals
THE FUTURE
OF THE TRANSISTOR
by Robert W. Keyes
IBM CORPORATION
CURRENT
STATE #2
some devices on a wafer may be no good ic new phenomena that appear in such
at all; the proportion of such irremedia- extremely small devices. Because the ef-
JOHNNY JOHNSON
ble errors places a practical limit on the fects cannot be accurately treated by
size of an integrated circuit. purely analytic methods, the designers
A certain amount of fuzziness is in- must have recourse to computer models
herent in optical exposures. The light that are able to simulate the motion of VOLTAGE
used in photolithography is diffracted as electrons in a device.
it passes through the holes in the tem- A computer follows a single electron BISTABLE CIRCUIT does the transis-
plate. Such diffraction can be minimized through a device, keeping track of its po- tors job by exploiting nonlinear effects. A
device such as a tunnel diode is placed at
by resorting to shorter wavelengths. sition as time is increased in small steps.
the junction of two main electrodes and a
When photolithographic fabrication Physical theory and experimental infor- minor one (top). If the minor electrode in-
was invented in the early 1970s, white mation are used to calculate the proba- jects some extra current, the circuit will
light was used. Workers later switched bility of the various events that are possi- move from one stable state to the other
to monochromatic laser light, moving ble. The computer uses a table for the (bottom). Such devices are impractical be-
up the spectrum until, in the mid-1980s, probabilities, stored in its memory, and cause they cannot tolerate much variation
they reached the ultraviolet wavelengths. a random number generator to simulate in signal strength.
Now the most advanced commercial the occurrence of these events. For ex-
chips are etched by deep ultraviolet light, ample, an electron is accelerated by an
a difficult operation because it is hard to electrical field, and the direction of its pen in small spaces during short periods.
devise lasers with output in that range. motion might be changed by a collision To refine these models, researchers need
The next generation of devices may re- with an impurity. Adding the results of to carry out experiments on femtosecond
quire x-rays. Indeed, each generation of thousands of electrons modeled in this timescales.
circuitry requires manufacturing equip- fashion gives a picture of the response of
ment of unprecedented expense. the device. Remaining Unknowns
Other problems also contribute to the Consider the seemingly trivial ques-
cost of making a chip. The mechanical
controls that position wafers must be-
come more precise. The clean rooms
tion of how to represent the motion of
an electron within an electrical field.
When path lengths were comparative-
E xpanded knowledge of solid-state
physics is required, because as chips
grow more complex they require more
and chambers must become ever clean- ly long, an electron quickly accelerated fabrication steps, and each step can in-
er to ward off the ever smaller motes to the point at which collisions robbed fluence the next. For instance, when
that can destroy a circuit. Quality-con- it of energy as fast as the field supplied doping atoms are introduced into a crys-
trol procedures must become even more new energy. The particle therefore tal, they tend to attract, repel or other-
elaborate as the number of possible de- spent most of its time at a constant ve- wise affect the motion of other dopants.
fects on a chip increases. locity, which can be modeled by a sim- Such effects of dopants on other dopants
ple, linear equation. When path are not well understood; further experi-
Device Sandwich lengths became shorter, the electron no ments and theoretical investigations are
longer had time to reach a stable ve- therefore needed. Chemical reactions
1010
JOHNNY JOHNSON
108
TRANSISTORS
PER CHIP
106
104
102
101
1960 1980 2000
YEAR
Salt-size transistors
1964
Circuit assembly
pable of vastly amplifying signals of the
kind processed in existing circuits, so
that a small variation in input can pro-
A nother proposed switch, sometimes
called a quantum interference de-
vice, depends on the interference of
1985
duce a large variation in output. Gain waves. In the most familiar case, that of
makes it possible to preserve the integri- electromagnetic radiation, or light, one
ty of a signal as it passes through many wave is divided into two components.
switches. The components begin oscillating in
Rivals to the transistor may have been phasethat is, their peaks and troughs
equally easy to miniaturize, but they ex- vibrate in tandem. If the components
hibited far less gain. Take, for instance, follow routes of different lengths before
bistable devices [see illustration on page reuniting, the phase relation between
49], which perform logic functions by their waveforms will be changed. Con-
moving between two stable states that sequently, the peaks and troughs either
are separated by an unstable transition. cancel or reinforce one another, produc-
Researchers have produced such a tran- ing a pattern of bright and dark fringes.
sition by designing circuits having a The displacement of the fringes measures
range of values in which current declines the relative phase of the system.
as voltage increases. Any slight distur- Electrons also possess a wave nature
bance, such as that obtained by inject- and can be made to interfere. If the two
ing extra current through the device, will components of a wave move at equal
switch the circuit between its two sta- speeds over similar paths to a rendez-
Dynamic random-access memory chip
ble states. vous, they will reconstitute the original
1997
Because this slight input can bring wave; if they move at different speeds,
about large changes in the current and they will interfere. One can manipulate
IBM CORPORATION
trons have differing energies. The dop-
ants are placed in the high-energy semi-
conductor, but the electrons they donate
immediately fall into the lower-energy
IMMENSE AND DENSE: this active-matrix liquid-crystal panel shows that todays layers, far from the impurities.
electronic structures can achieve great complexity over large areas. Each liquid-crystal What, one may ask, would one want
pixel is controlled by its own transistor, providing extraordinary resolution. with a technology that can etch a mil-
lion transistors into a grain of sand or
put a supercomputer in a shirt pocket?
the velocity of one wave by applying a ence device will not restore the binary The answer goes beyond computational
tiny electrical field to its pathway. The nature of a degraded input signal but will power to the things such power can buy
correct field strength will cause the waves add its own measure of noise. Data pass- in the emerging information economy. It
to cancel so that no current can flow ing from one such device to another will has only recently been taken for granted
through the device. quickly degenerate into nothingness. that anyone with a personal computer
At first sight, this action duplicates a and a modem can search 1,000 newspa-
field-effect transistor, which uses an elec- The Only Game in Town pers for references to anything that
trical field to control a current through comes to mind, from kiwifruit to quan-
a semiconductor. In an interference de-
vice, however, conditions must be just
right: if the applied voltage is too high
T he lack of real rivals means that the
future of digital electronics must be
sought in the transistor. The search be-
tum physics. Will it soon be possible for
every person to carry a copy of the Li-
brary of Congress, to model the weath-
or too low, there will be some current. gins anew with each voyage into a small- er, to weigh alternative business strate-
This sensitivity means that an interfer- er scale or a different material. The latest gies or to checkmate Garry Kasparov? SA
The Author
ROBERT W. KEYES is a research staff member at the IBM patents. A native of Chicago, Keyes studied at the University of
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. His Chicago, where he earned a doctorate in physics. He is an active
interests have focused on semiconductor physics and devices and on participant in the programs of the National Research Council, the
the physics of information-processing systems, subjects on which he American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Elec-
has written and lectured widely; he has also received eight issued tronics Engineers.
Further Reading
Field-Effect Transistors in Integrated Circuits. J. T. Wall- 119121; October 1989.
mark and L. G. Carlstedt. John Wiley & Sons, 1974. Limitations, Innovations, and Devices into a Half Micro-
The Physics of VLSI Systems. R. W. Keyes. Addison-Wesley Pub- meter and Beyond. M. Nagata in IEEE Journal of Solid-State
lishing, 1987. Circuits, Vol. 27, No. 4, pages 465472; April 1992.
Can We Switch by Control of Quantum Mechanical Trans- The Future of Solid-State Electronics. R. W. Keyes in Physics
mission? Rolf Landauer in Physics Today, Vol. 42, No. 10, pages Today, Vol. 45, No. 8, pages 4248; August 1992.
once more being asked in some quarters. What will happen to the
TOM DRAPER
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 55
Tiny silicon chips make modern digital technology possible.
Heres how the chips themselves are made
56 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
Chip Design
The first operation is the design of the chip. When tens of millions of tran-
sistors are to be built on a square of silicon about the size of a childs finger-
nail, the placing and interconnections of the transistors must be meticulously
worked out. Each transistor must be designed for its intended function, and
groups of transistors are combined to create circuit elements such as invert-
ers, adders and decoders. The designer must also take into account the in-
tended purpose of the chip. A processor chip carries out instructions in a com-
puter, and a memory chip stores data. The two types of chips differ somewhat
SILICON in structure. Because of the complexity of todays chips, the design work is
DRAWINGS BY BARRY ROSS, AFTER INTEL AND SEMICONDUCTOR EQUIPMENT AND MATERIALS INTERNATIONAL
INGOT done by computer, although engineers often print out an enlarged diagram of
a chips structure to examine it in detail (above).
From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 57
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
The First Layers
With the wafer prepared, the process of building the chips circuitry begins. Making
the transistors and their interconnections entails several different basic steps that are re-
peated many times. The most complex chips made today consist of 20 or more layers
and may require several hundred separate processing steps to build them up one by one.
The first layer is silicon dioxide, which does not conduct electricity and therefore
serves as an insulator. It is created by putting the wafers into a diffusion furnace (top
right)essentially an oven at high temperature where a thin layer of oxide is grown on
the wafer surface.
Removed from the furnace, the wafer is now ready for its first patterning, or pho-
tolithographic, step. A coating of a fairly viscous polymeric liquid called photoresist,
which becomes soluble when it is exposed to ultraviolet light, is applied to the surface.
A spigot deposits a precise amount of photoresist on the wafer surface (bottom). Then
the wafer is spun so that centrifugal force spreads the liquid over the surface at an even
thickness. This operation takes place on every layer that is modified by a photolitho-
graphic procedure called masking, described in the next step.
PHOTORESIST
DIFFUSION FURNACE
SILICON
SUBSTRATE
SILICON DIOXIDE
WAFER COATED
WITH PHOTORESIST
SPIGOT THAT
DEPOSITS
PHOTORESIST
COATING
58 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
Masking
A mask is the device through which ultraviolet light shines to define the circuit pattern on
each layer of a chip. Because the pattern is intricate and must be positioned precisely on the
chip, the arrangement of opaque and transparent spaces on a mask must be done carefully
during a chips design stage.
The mask image is transferred to the wafer using a computer-controlled machine known
as a stepper. It has a sophisticated lens system (below) to reduce the pattern on the mask to
the microscopic dimensions of the chips circuitry, requiring resolution as small as 0.25 mi-
cron. The wafer is held in place on a positioning table below the lens system. Ultraviolet
light from an arc lamp or a laser shines through the clear spaces of the masks intricate pat-
tern onto the photoresist layer of a single chip. The stepper table then moves the wafer the
precise distance required to position another chip under the light. On each chip, the parts MERCURY ARC LAMP
of the photoresist layer that were struck by the light become soluble and can be developed,
much like photographic film, using organic solvents. Once the photoresist is patterned, the
wafer is ready for etching.
MASK
OPTICAL
ALIGNMENT
SYSTEM
MASK
LENS
PATTERNS
PROJECTED STEPPER
ONTO WAFER POSITIONING
TABLE
WAFER
SPIGOT THAT
DEPOSITS ACID
Etching
During this step, photoresist remaining on the
surface protects parts of the underlying layer from
ETCHED WAFER being removed by the acids or reactive gases used to
etch the pattern on the surface of the wafer. After
etching is complete, the protective layer of photore-
sist is removed to reveal electrically conducting or
electrically insulating segments in the pattern deter-
mined by the mask (left). Each additional layer put
on the chip has a distinctive pattern of this kind.
SILICON SUBSTRATE
From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 59
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
SILICON DIOXIDE
Adding Layers POLYSILICON
Further masking and etching steps deposit patterns
of additional materials on the chip. These materials in-
clude polysilicon as well as various oxides and metal
conductors such as aluminum and tungsten. To prevent
the formation of undesired compounds during subse-
quent steps, other materials known as diffusion barri-
ers can also be added. On each layer of material, mask-
ing and etching create a unique pattern of conducting
and nonconducting areas (right). Together these pat-
terns aligned on top of one another form the chips cir-
cuitry in a three-dimensional structure. But the circuit-
ry needs fine-tuning to work properly. The tuning is
provided by doping. SILICON SUBSTRATE
ION IMPLANTER
Doping
Doping deliberately adds chemical impurities, such as boron or arsenic, to
parts of the silicon wafer to alter the way the silicon in each doped area conducts
electricity. Machines called ion implanters (left) are often used to inject these im-
purities into the chip.
In electrical terms, silicon can be either n-type or p-type, depending on the im-
POLYSILICON purity added. The atoms in the doping material in n-type silicon have an extra
electron that is free to move. Some of the doping atoms in p-type silicon are
DOPED SILICON short an electron and so constitute what is called a hole. Where the two types ad-
join, the extra electrons can flow from the n-type to the p-type to fill the holes.
This flow of electrons does not continue indefinitely. Eventually the positively
charged ions left behind on the n-type side and the negatively charged ions on
the p-type side together create an electrical force that prevents any further net
flow of electrons from the n-type to the p-type region.
The material at the base of the chip is p-type silicon. One of the etching steps
in the manufacture of a chip removes parts of the polysilicon and silicon dioxide
layers put on the pure silicon base earlier, thus laying bare two strips of p-type
silicon. Separating them is a strip that still bears its layer of conducting polysili-
con; it is the transistors gate. The doping material now applied to the two
strips of p-type silicon transforms them into n-type silicon. A positive charge ap-
plied to the gate attracts electrons below the gate in the transistors silicon base.
These electrons create a channel between one n-type strip (the source) and the
other (the drain). If a positive voltage is applied to the drain, current will flow
from source to drain. In this mode, the transistor is on. A negative charge at
the gate depletes the channel of electrons, thereby preventing the flow of current
between source and drain. Now the transistor is off. It is by means of switch-
ing on and off that a transistor represents the arrays of 1 and 0 that constitute
the binary code, the language of computers.
Done many times in many layers, these operations provide the chip with its
multitude of transistors. But just as provision must be made to run electrical
wires and plumbing pipes between floors of a building, provision must be made
in chips for interconnecting the transistors so they form an integrated circuit.
60 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
ALUMINUM
GATE
DRAIN
SOURCE
DICING MACHINE
WIRE BONDER
Interconnections
This final step begins with further masking and etching operations that open a
thin layer of electrical contacts between layers of the chip. Then aluminum is de-
posited and patterned using photolithography to create a form of wiring that links
all the chips transistors (top). Aluminum is chosen for this application because it
makes good electrical contact with silicon and also bonds well to silicon dioxide.
This step completes the processing of the wafer. Now the individual chips are
tested to ensure that all their electrical connections work using tiny electrical
probes (above right). Next, a machine called a dicer cuts up the wafer into individ-
ual chips (above left), and the good chips are separated from the bad. The good
chipsusually most of the wafers cropare mounted onto packaging units with
metal leads. Wire bonders (left) then attach these metal leads to the chips. The elec-
trical contacts between the chips surface and the leads are made with tiny gold or
aluminum wires about 0.025 millimeter (0.001 inch) in diameter. Once the pack-
aging process is complete, the finished chips are sent to do their digital work. SA
From Sand to Silicon: Manufacturing an Integrated Circuit Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 61
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
PROFILE
The Law
of More
by W. Wayt Gibbs, staff writer
INTEL CO-FOUNDER Gordon E. Moore sees potholes on The full text of Scientific Americans interview with
the road to desktop supercomputers. Gordon E. Moore is available at http://www.sciam.com
T he ability to store and process information in new ways has been es-
sential to humankinds progress. From early Sumerian clay tokens
through the Gutenberg printing press, the Dewey decimal system and,
eventually, the semiconductor, information storage has been the catalyst for increas-
ingly complex legal, political and societal systems. Modern science, too, is inextrica-
bly bound to information processing, with which it exists in a form of symbiosis. Sci-
entific advances have enabled the storage, retrieval and processing of ever more in-
formation, which has helped generate the insights needed for further advances.
Over the past few decades, semiconductor electronics has become the driving
force in this crucial endeavor, ushering in a remarkable epoch. Integrated circuits
made possible the personal computers that have transformed the world of busi-
ness, as well as the controls that make engines and machines run more cleanly and
efficiently and the medical systems that save lives. In so doing, they spawned in-
dustries that are able to generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues and
provide jobs for millions of people. All these benefits, and far too many more to
list here, accrue in no small measure from the fact that the semiconductor industry
has been able to integrate more and more transistors onto chips, at ever lower costs.
This ability, largely unprecedented in industrial history, is so fundamental in the
semiconductor business that it is literally regarded as a law. Nevertheless, from
time to time, fears that technical and economic obstacles might soon slow the pace
of advances in semiconductor technology have cropped up. Groups of scientists and
engineers have often predicted the imminence of so-called showstopping problems,
only to see those predictions foiled by the creativity and ingenuity of their peers.
To paraphrase a former U.S. president, here we go again. With the cost of build-
ing a new semiconductor facility now into 10 figures, and with the densities of
transistors close to the theoretical limits for the technologies being used, an unset-
tling question is once more being asked in some quarters. What will happen to the
industry when it finally must confront technical barriers that are truly impassable?
I n 1965, seven years after the integrated circuit was invented, Gordon Moore
observed that the number of transistors that semiconductor makers could put
on a chip was doubling every year. Moore, who cofounded Intel Corporation in
1968 and is now an industry sage, correctly predicted that this pace would contin-
ue into at least the near future. The phenomenon became known as Moores Law,
and it has had far-reaching implications.
66 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
CIRCUIT LAYOUT helps designers to keep track
of the design for a chip. Different layers of the
chip are shown in different colors. This image
shows part of the layout for one of Motorolas
Power PC microprocessors.
himselfintegration contin-
ued to increase at an astound-
ing rate. True, in the late
1970s, the pace slowed to a
doubling of transistors every
18 months. But it has held to
this rate ever since, leading to
commercial integrated circuits
today with more than six mil-
lion transistors. The electronic
components in these chips
measure 0.35 micron across.
Chips with 10 million or more
transistors measuring 0.25 or
even 0.16 micron are expect-
ed to become commercially
available soon.
In stark contrast to what
would seem to be implied by
the dependable doubling of
transistor densities, the route
that led to todays chips was
anything but smooth. It was
more like a harrowing obsta-
cle course that repeatedly re-
quired chipmakers to over-
come significant limitations in
their equipment and produc-
tion processes. None of those
problems turned out to be the
dreaded showstopper whose
solution would be so costly
that it would slow or even
halt the pace of advances in
semiconductors and, there-
fore, the growth of the indus-
try. Successive roadblocks,
however, have become increas-
ingly imposing, for reasons
tied to the underlying tech-
nologies of semiconductor
manufacturing.
Chips are made by creating
ILL
Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 67
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
1 PREPARED
PHOTORESIST SILICON WAFER
PROJECTED
SILICON LIGHT
DIOXIDE LAYER
SILICON
NITRIDE LAYER
SILICON
SUBSTRATE
RETICLE
(OR MASK)
2 LENS
SIMILAR CYCLE IS REPEATED
6 TO LAY DOWN METAL LINKS
BETWEEN TRANSISTORS
EXPOSED
4 PHOTORESIST
DOPED IS REMOVED
REGION
CHIP FABRICATION occurs as a cycle of steps carried out as falls, a chip is made. The photosensitive coating is removed (3),
many as 20 times. Many chips are made simultaneously on a sil- and the light-exposed areas are etched by gases (4). These areas
icon wafer, to which has been applied a light-sensitive coating are then showered with ions (or doped), creating transistors
(1). Each cycle starts with a different pattern, which is projected (5). The transistors are then connected as successive cycles add
repeatedly onto the wafer (2). In each place where the image layers of metal and insulator (6).
posited to make the transistors. Then a at that point, the photoresist is removed. smallest features that can be resolved by
photosensitive coating, called the pho- More sets of mask layers, based on an optical system with a circular aper-
toresist, is spun over these films. The much the same deposition, lithography ture is proportional to the wavelength
photoresist is exposed with a stepper, and etching steps, create the conducting of the light source divided by the diam-
which is similar to an enlarger used to films of metal or polysilicon needed to eter of the aperture of the objective lens.
make photographic prints. Instead of a link transistors. All told, about 19 mask In other words, the shorter the wave-
negative, however, the stepper uses a ret- layers are required to make a chip. length and the larger the aperture, the
icle, or mask, to project a pattern onto The physics underlying these manu- finer the resolution.
the photoresist. After being exposed, the facturing steps suggests several poten- The limit is a cardinal law in the
photoresist is developed, which delin- tial obstacles to continued technical semiconductor industry because it can
eates the spaces, known as contact win- progress. One follows from Rayleighs be used to determine the size of the
dows, where the different conducting resolution limit, named after John Wil- smallest transistors that can be put on a
layers interconnect. An etcher then cuts liam Strutt, the third Baron of Rayleigh, chip. In the lithography of integrated
through the oxide film so that electrical who won the 1904 Nobel Prize for Phys- circuits, the most commonly used light
contacts to transistors can be made, and ics. According to this limit, the size of the source is the mercury lamp. Its most
68 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
useful line spectra for this purpose oc- Skyrocketing costs of creative improvements will dry up.
cur at 436 and 365 nanometers, the so- Nevertheless, as the stream becomes a
called mercury g and i lines. The former have once again focused trickle, the economic consequences of
is visible to the human eye; the latter is approaching technical barriers will be
just beyond visibility in the ultraviolet. attention on limits in the felt before the barriers themselves are
The numerical apertures used range reached. For example, the costs of
from a low of about 0.28 for run-of-the- semiconductor industry. achieving higher levels of chip perfor-
mill industrial lenses to a high of about mance rise very rapidly as the limits of
0.65 for those in leading-edge lithogra- a manufacturing technology are ap-
phy tools. These values, taken together proached and then surpassed. Increas-
with other considerations arising from ing costs may drive prices beyond what
demands of high-volume manufactur- the best available equipment just sever- buyers are willing to pay, causing the
ing, give a limiting resolution of about al years ago. market to stagnate before the actual
0.54 micron for g-line lenses and about Innovative solutions overcame these barriers are encountered.
0.48 for i-line ones. limitations. Planarizing methods were Eventually, though, as a new manu-
Until the mid-1980s, it was believed developed to ensure optically flat sur- facturing technology takes hold, the
that g-line operation was the practical faces. Fine adjustments to the edges of costs of fabricating chips begin to de-
limit. But one by one, obstacles to i-line the patterns in the reticle were used to cline. At this point, the industry has
operation were eliminated in a manner shift the phase of the incoming i-line ra- jumped from a cost-performance curve
that well illustrates the complex rela- diation, permitting crisper edge defini- associated with the old technology to a
tions between economics and technolo- tions and therefore smaller featuresin new curve for the new process. In ef-
gy in the industry. Technical barriers effect, circumventing Rayleighs limit. fect, the breakthrough from one manu-
were surmounted, and, more important, One of the last adjustments was the sim- facturing technology to another forces
others were found to be mere by-prod- ple acceptance of a lower value of the the cost curve to bend downward, push-
ucts of the level of risk the enterprise was proportionality constant, which is relat- ing technical limits farther out [see illus-
willing to tolerate. This history is quite ed to the degree of contrast in the im- tration below]. When this happens,
relevant to the situation the industry now age projected onto the wafer during higher levels of performance are obtain-
finds itself inclose to what appear to be lithography. For i-line operation, manu- able without an increase in cost, prompt-
the practical limits of i-line operation. facturers gritted their teeth
and accepted a lower pro- PRICE VERSUS PERFORMANCE
Must the Show Go On? portionality constant than MANUFACTURING
was previously thought prac- COST CURVES
LISA BURNETT
seen would be difficult. Glasses were micron features.
eventually developed that could pass In this last instance, what
more than 99 percent of i-line radiation, was really at issue was the
E1 E2 T1 T2
and new technologies were invented to loss in contrast ratio that a Economic Technology
solve the alignment problem. company was willing to tol- Barriers Barriers
There are other difficulties, however. erate. With perfect contrast, PRODUCT PERFORMANCE
Rayleighs limit also establishes the in- the image that is created on SOURCE: VLSI Research, Inc.
terval within which the pattern project- the photoresist is sharp. Like
ed by the lens is in focus. Restricted so many of the limitations in COST CURVE is associated with each chip-manu-
depth of focus can work against resolu- the industry, contrast ratio facturing system. Technology barriers, T1 and T2, are
tion limits: the better the resolution, the was perceived to be a techni- where minute increases in chip performance can be
shallower the depth of focus. For a lens cal barrier, but it was actual- achieved only at a huge cost. Economic barriers are
as described above, the depth of focus ly a risk decision. Lower con- encountered well before the technological ones, how-
is about 0.52 micron for the best g-line trast ratios did not lower ever. These occur where the line representing the
maximum price customers are willing to pay inter-
lenses and about 0.50 for i-line ones. yields, it was found, if there
sects with the curves (at E1 and E2). Technology
Such shallow depths of focus demand were tighter controls else- breakthroughs have the effect of bending the curve
extremely flat wafer surfacesmuch where in the process. downward, to the position of the darker plot. When
flatter than what could be maintained It has been difficult to pre- this happens, performance improves, shifting the bar-
across the diagonal of a large chip with dict whenor ifthis stream riers to E2 and T2.
Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 69
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
How Much Bang for the Buck?
197175 197684 198596 modifying the ROI model. our old standby: the ratio of cash generat-
In the conventional model, ed during a given year to investments
additional capital investments made in new technology during the previ-
are made only when gaps oc- ous year. Results for Intel over most of its
cur between a manufacturers history are plotted in the chart at the left.
actual and anticipated capaci- Several interesting aspects of Intels fi-
ty (the latter is the capacity a nancial history emerge in this diagram,
4
company thinks it will need to called a phase chart. Connecting the plot-
(RATIO OF NEW CASH GENERATED TO
EQUIPMENT AND R&D INVESTMENT)
1973 meet demand in the near fu- ted points traces loops that each corre-
3 ture). Such gaps usually result spond to roughly a six-year cycle, during
1974 from the aging of equipment which Intel roams from a period of un-
RISING PROFITABILITY
1976 1996 and the departure of experi- profitable operations caused by heavy
2 1995 enced personnel. In industries capital investment to an interval of very
1993
1987 such as semiconductors, on good cash generation stemming from
1994 1979 the other hand, not only must much lighter capital investment. From the
1
1981 increases in capacity be con- chart, it is clear that Intel is now entering
1986 1971 stantly anticipated, but also another period of heavy capital investment.
0 great advances in the manu- Other semiconductor (and comparable
0 1 2 3 facturing technology itself must high-technology) companies go through
RISING INVESTMENT be foreseen and planned for. similar cycles. Of course, the timing of the
(RATIO OF PLANT AND EQUIPMENT To account for this technol- periods of profitability and heavy invest-
INVESTMENT TO R&D)
ogy-drag effect, we began by ment varies from company to company.
SOURCE: VLSI Research, Inc.
considering the ratio of cash Each loop is lower than the one that
generated during any given preceded it. This insight is perhaps the
PHASE CHART shows the relation between Intels year to investments made in most significant that the illustration has to
profits and investments in technology throughout the new technology the year be- offer, because it means that Intels profits,
companys history. Plotted points trace loops that fore. New technology, in this relative to the capital expenditures gener-
each correspond to roughly a six-year cycle. (The cy- context, consists of both new ating them, are declining with each suc-
cles are shown in different colors.) During each of
manufacturing equipment and cessive cycle. Because it shows the full cy-
them, Intel roams from a period of unprofitable op-
erations caused by heavy investment to an interval of research and development. cle between investment in technology
very good cash generation stemming from much Cash generated during the year and its payoff, this phase chart is a power-
lighter investment. Green arrows indicate the year in is the gross profit generated ful tool for observing and managing the
each cycle when Intel made the most money and by operations, including mon- investment cycles peculiar to this unique,
spent lightly on equipment. ey earmarked for reinvestment dynamic industry. G.D.H. and J.D.H.
70 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
ing buyers to replace older equipment. 109
This is important in the electronics in- TIME FRAMES FOR
dustry, because products seldom wear LITHOGRAPHY SYSTEMS
out before becoming obsolete. 256M
The principles outlined so far apply CONTACT ALIGNERS
to all kinds of chips, but memory is the
PROXIMITY ALIGNERS
highest-volume business and is in some 108
ways the most significant. From about PROJECTION ALIGNERS 64M
$550,000 25 years ago, the price of a
megabyte of semiconductor memory FIRST G-LINE STEPPERS
has declined to just $4 today. But over 16M
the same period, the cost of building a ADVANCED G-LINE STEPPERS 80786
factory to manufacture such memory 107 POWER PC 620
FIRST I-LINE STEPPERS
16K 8086
ing approached are so high that getting
beyond them will probably cause more
far-reaching changes than did previous 104 4K
cycles of this kind. To understand why
requires outlining some details about the 8080 INTEL MICROPROCESSOR
1K 6800
obstacles themselves. MOTOROLA MICROPROCESSOR
Most have to do with the thin-film
LISA BRAIMAN
4004 SIZE OF MEMORY (DRAM) IN BITS
structures composing the integrated cir-
cuit or with the light sources needed to 10 3
make the extremely thin conducting 1970 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 2000
lines or with the line widths themselves. YEAR OF AVAILABILITY
Two examples concern the dielectric con- SOURCES: VLSI Research, Inc.; Integrated Circuit Engineering Corporation
stant of the insulating thin films. The
dielectric constant is an electrical prop- TRANSISTOR DENSITIES on integrated circuits have increased at an exponential
erty that indicates, among other things, rate, as shown on this logarithmic plot. The rate has been sustained by a succession of
lithography systems, which are used in chipmaking to project patterns onto wafers.
the ability of an insulating film to keep Higher densities have been achieved in memory chips because of their more regular and
signals from straying between the nar- straightforward design.
rowly spaced conducting lines on a chip.
Yet as more transistors are integrated
onto a chip, these films are packed clos- the opposite propertya high dielectric sources for lithography is also daunt-
er together, and cross-talk between sig- constantare needed. Most integrated ing. Finer resolution demands shorter
nal lines becomes worse. circuits require capacitors. In a semicon- wavelengths. But the most popular mer-
One possible solution is to reduce the ductor dynamic random-access memory cury light sources in use today emit very
value of the dielectric constant, making (DRAM), for instance, each bit is actu- little energy at wavelengths shorter than
the insulator more impermeable to cross- ally stored in a capacitor, a device capa- the i lines 365 nanometers. Excimer
talk. This, in turn, initiates a twofold ble of retaining an electrical charge. (A lasers are useful down to about 193
search, one for new materials with low- charged capacitor represents binary 1, nanometers but generate little energy
er dielectric constants, the other for new and an uncharged capacitor is 0.) Typi- below that wavelength. In recent years,
film structures that can reduce further cally, the amount of capacitance that is excimer-laser lithography has been used
the overall dielectric constant. Some en- available on a chip is never quite to fabricate some special-purpose, high-
gineers are even looking for ways to enough. Capacitance is proportional to performance chips in small batches.
riddle the insulating film with small the dielectric constant, so DRAMs and For still shorter wavelengths, x-ray
voids, to take advantage of the very low similar chips need materials of a high sources are considered the last resort.
dielectric constant of air or a vacuum. dielectric constant. Nevertheless, 20 years of research on x-
Elsewhere on the chip, materials with The quest for more advanced light ray lithography has produced only mod-
Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 71
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
est results. No commercially Like the semiconductor in-
available chips have as yet dustry, aviation had a fast
been made with x-rays. start. In less than 40 years
the industry went from the
Billion-Dollar Factories Wright brothers biplane to
the Pan Am Clipper, the Fly-
SCOT HILL
has reduced these steep price as one for speed. Although
increases to a mere doubling the 747 was a successful air-
of price with each new sig- craft, filling its many seats
INTEGRATED CIRCUIT, or die, for Motorolas Power PC 620
nificant development. The microprocessor has nearly seven million transistors. It was de- was often difficult on all but
price of other kinds of semi- signed mainly for use in computer workstations and file servers. the longest routes. The Con-
conductor-fabrication equip- corde, on the other hand, was
ment has gone up in a simi- an economic failure because
lar fashion. Such an occurrence would not be en- noise pollution limited its use. Both rep-
Such increases have boosted the over- tirely without precedent. The cost per resented high-water marks, in the sense
all costs of building semiconductor plants bit of memories rose by 279 percent be- that technology could not realistically
at about half the rate of Moores Law, tween 1985 and 1988 without dire provide more capacity or speed. Never-
doubling every three years. Intel is spend- consequences. In fact, 1988 was one of theless, aviation did not go into a tail-
ing $1.3 billion on its new factory in the semiconductor industrys best years. spin. It entered a second phase in which
Hillsboro, Ore., and the same amount on When the cost per bit begins to rise per- a greater diversity of smaller airplanes
another one in Chandler, Ariz. Advanced manently, the most likely result will be were designed and built for more spe-
Micro Devices (AMD) and Samsung an industrial phase change that signifi- cific markets. The focus of research and
are each building plants that will cost cantly alters business models. development shifted from speed and
$1.5 billion to finish; Motorola and LG size to more efficient and quieter opera-
Semicon of Korea have plans for a facto- Up, Up and Away tions and more passenger comfort.
ry that will cost over $2 billion. Small- In railroads, the trends were similar.
er factories can be built for less, but
they tend to be less efficient. V irtually every industry more than a From the 19th century until well into
few decades old has had to endure the 1970s, the pulling power of loco-
That factories now cost so much is such phase changes. Although the semi- motives was continually increased in or-
one piece of widely cited evidence that conductor industry is obviously unique, der to lower the costs of moving freight.
formidable technical barriers are close. it is still subject to the principles of eco- Locomotives were a significant capital
But the fear that the barriers might be nomics and of supply and demand. expense, but gains in pulling power oc-
insurmountable, bringing the industry Therefore, the history of older, techni- curred more rapidly than increases in
to a halt, seems to us to be unfounded. cal industries, such as aviation, rail- cost did. Eventually, however, locomo-
Rather the prices of semiconductors may roads and automobiles, would seem to tive development costs became so great
increase, and the rate of change in the have episodes that could act as pointers that suppliers and users teamed up. The
industry may slow. about what to expect. Union Pacific Railroad, the largest rail-
72 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
road of its time, joined with General The semiconductor theme in all these industries, from rail-
Motorss Electro-Motive Division to roads to semiconductors, is that their
create the EMD DD-40, a monster that industry could flourish initial phase was dominated by efforts
turned out to be too big and inflexible to improve performance and to lower
for any purpose other than hauling as it encounters cost. In the three transportation indus-
freight clear across the U.S. Its failure tries, which are considerably more ma-
led the railroad industry back to the use technical barriers. ture, a second phase was characterized
of smaller engines that could be operat- by product refinement and diversity
ed separately for small loads but hitched similar to what is now starting to hap-
together for big ones. pen in chipmaking. Companies are shift-
Today the semiconductor industry ing their use of technology from lower-
finds itself in a position not unlike that he or she wanted, as long as it was black. ing manufacturing costs to enhancing
of the railroad companies just before Trends in automobile manufacturing product lines. The important point is
the EMD DD-40. The costs of develop- shifted to permit more conveniences, that all these industries continued to
ing the factories for future generations features and models. As the industry thrive in spite of higher manufacturing
of memory chips are so high that com- matured, Alfred E. Sloan of General costs.
panies have begun banding together into Motors recognized that efficiency was It may not be long before the semi-
different groups, each to attack in its no longer increasing with factory size conductor industry plateaus. The pace
own way the enormous problems posed and that big factories were good mainly of transistor integration will decline,
by fabricating these extremely dense for building large numbers of the same and manufacturing costs will begin to
chips economically. product. He therefore split the compa- soar. But as the histories of the aviation,
ny into divisions with clearly defined railroad and automobile industries sug-
Big Plants, Little Variety markets and dedicated factories to sup- gest, the semiconductor industry could
port them. Customers preferred the re- flourish as it encounters unprecedented
The Authors
G. DAN HUTCHESON and JERRY D. HUTCHESON have de- Motorola, Signetics, Fairchild and Teledyne Semiconductor. Dan
voted their careers to advancing semiconductor manufacturing. In started his career at VLSI Research as an economist, building sever-
1976 Jerry founded VLSI Research, Inc., as a technical consulting al simulation models of the manufacturing process. In 1981 he de-
firm. Dan, his son, joined in 1979. They have focused on analyzing veloped the first cost-based model to guide semiconductor compa-
how the interplay of technology and economics affects the business nies in their choice of manufacturing equipment. Dan serves on the
of semiconductor manufacture. Before founding VLSI Research, Jer- University of Californias Berkeley Extension Advisory Council and
ry, who entered the industry in 1959 as a device physicist, held vari- is a member of the Semiconductor Industry Associations Technolo-
ous positions in research, manufacturing and marketing at RCA, gy Roadmap Council.
Further Reading
Is Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Still Afford- Ion Beam Lithographies for Manufacturing, Vol. 2437; February
able? Jerry D. Hutcheson and G. Dan Hutcheson in Proceedings 1995.
of the 1993 International Symposium on Semiconductor Manu- Affordability Concerns in Advanced Semiconductor Man-
facturing. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Septem- ufacturing: The Nature of Industrial Linkage. Donald A.
ber 1993. Hicks and Steven Brown in Proceedings of the 1995 International
SIA 1994 National Technology Roadmap for Semiconduc- Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing. Institute of Electri-
tors. Semiconductor Industry Association, 1994. cal and Electronics Engineers, September 1995.
Lithography and the Future of Moores Law. Gordon E. Solid State. Linda Geppert in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 34, No. 1,
Moore in SPIE Proceedings on Electron-Beam, X-Ray, EUV, and pages 5559; January 1997.
Technology and Economics in the Semiconductor Industry Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 73
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
Gigabit chips are now in the laboratory.
But the critical technology needed for manufacturing
smaller circuits confronts diminishing returns
Limits of Lithography
REDUCTION
LENS
WAFER
POSITION
MEASUREMENT
SYSTEM
ROBOTIC
WAFER
ASM LITHOGRAPHY
HANDLER
STEPPER
POSITIONING
TABLE
STEPPER, or photolithography machine, imprints circuit pat- circuit. A sophisticated lens apparatus reduces the image and
terns on silicon wafers. Ultraviolet light from an arc lamp (or projects it onto part of a wafer. The table then moves, or
from a laser) passes through a mask bearing the image of the steps, to expose other chips.
commercial synchrotron storage ring in million for such x-ray generators should redesign the entire plant around the x-ray
the U.S. It consists of two superconduct- not deter their purchase. Those amounts lithographic process. One problem is that
ing magnets whose field confines elec- are 3 percent or less of the cost of the if a company wants to make a small in-
trons within a closed orbit. Electrons newest semiconductor plants. Moreover, crease in plant capacity, that, too, costs
emit x-rays as they circulate within the a synchrotron can supply x-rays to 16 $20 million.
storage ring. (Several Japanese compa- steppers simultaneously. For a sizable Another technical obstacle springs
nies are also working on x-ray lithogra- increase in plant capacity, a $20-million from the lack of a commercially feasible
phy development.) outlay is not unreasonable. A more im- way to focus x-rays. Given that x-ray step-
The price tag of $20 million to $50 posing challenge stems from the need to pers lack the equivalent of lenses (or
Surprisingly enough, the technology sensing the position of individual atoms. equipment that can be bought by lead-
that can make the smallest chip struc- Conventional optical lithography can ing chip manufacturers.
tures is already used every day in man- make such tools. It sketches the outlines Perhaps only one or two of these tech-
ufacturing. Electron-beam lithography for hundreds or even thousands of nologies will make it to the factory floor.
employs a focused pencil of charged cathodes on silicon. When a voltage is It simply costs too much to fund any
particles to draw lines directly on a pho- applied to the cathodes, they generate more than that. Expenses for big-ticket
toresist. Indeed, companies sketch circuit beams of electrons, which can draw cir- lithography may require industry col-
patterns onto photolithographic masks cuit lines less than 0.05 micron wide. laborations of competing suppliers,
with this technique. For 20 years, engi- Noel C. MacDonald, a professor of elec- whether their corporate headquarters is
neers have dreamed of marshaling it for trical engineering at Cornell University, in Tokyo or Silicon Valley.
high-volume lithography. Unfortunate- has built an array of 1,000 cathodes, Design ingenuity may overtake the
ly, electron beams are achingly slow: a providing the makings for an electron- drive to craft diminutive physical at-
pencil beam must draw each element of beam machine on a chip. tributes. Chips can be made bigger to
a circuit pattern individually, rather than MacDonald foresees employing the hold more components. Horizontal lay-
exposing the entire chip surface in a flash technology in making masksand per- ers of transistors could be stacked one
of light. It can take hours to make single haps later for actually building small atop the other on the same chip to in-
chipstoo long for mass production, chips. MacDonald, with students Yang crease memory or logic density. All the
although some high-performance elec- Xu and Scott A. Miller, has also demon- while the size of individual chip ele-
tronics that use nonsilicon materials are strated how a scanning tunneling micro- mentsa transistor or capacitormay
made this way. scope can be integrated with motors 200 remain the same.
Since the late 1980s Bell Labs has microns wide, which are also fabricated The art and science of lithography
studied a method that scans a broad with photolithographic methods. The may be reaching a mature stage. Mo-
electron beam across a chip. As in pho- sharpened tip of the scanning tunneling torola or Intel might learn by consult-
tolithography, the radiation gets pro- microscope has been used in research ing with retired Boeing executives. In
jected through a mask, and the image is laboratories to push around atoms. The constant dollars, air travel is practically
reduced with a lens. Lucent Technolo- micromotors might let an array of free compared with its cost 35 years
gies, the parent of Bell Labs, considers tipsthousands or even a millionpat- ago. But speed of flight has not experi-
this scanning-beam technique to be the tern a surface rapidly enough for com- enced a similar progression. The ex-
most promising for long-term lithogra- mercial manufacture of circuit lines of pense of building and flying supersonic
phy. Still far ahead is a lithographic but a few nanometers. transports means there are very few of
technique that could promote the em- these airplanes carrying passengers to-
bryonic science of nanotechnology. In Graduate Research day. Were flying at the same speed
theory, microscopic tools might fashion that the 707 flew in 1958, says Law-
the tiniest silicon transistors, those whose
smallest dimensions measure only a few
tens of nanometers. They might also
A rrays of cathodes or scanning tun-
neling microscopes are examples
of the most advanced research projects
rence Livermore lithography expert
Richard Freeman. I think the same
kind of thing could conceivably happen
design new types of electronic devices in lithography anywhere. But they are here. In other words, point one
that store or process information by still graduate-level research projects, not may be the chip industrys Mach 1. SA
Ta c k l i n g T y r a n n y
by Alan Goldstein
THE SEMICONDUCTING
MENAGERIE
by Ivan Amato
Those who think they have never seen exotic II-VI cousinsis that each has
or used a nonsilicon semiconductor are its own set of intrinsic and potentially
wrong. Remember those funky red-light- useful electronic or optical traits.
emitting diodes (LEDs) and watch and Underlying these properties is the
calculator displays that first started ap- materials so-called band gap. This term
pearing in the late 1960s? They were INTEGRATED CIRCUIT of gallium ar- refers to a kind of forbidden territory
based on such materials as gallium ar- senide contains 25,000 transistors and is for electrons associated with the atoms
used in communications systems.
senide phosphide and gallium phosphide. of a crystal. Below the band gap is the
And LEDs were just the beginning. Prac- valence band, a range of lower-energy
tically every compact-disc player con- lar telephones operate at frequencies at electron states in which the electrons in
tains a two-dollar, mass-produced semi- the edge of, or beyond, the capabilities the crystal remain closely associated
conductor laser, the stylus that bounc- of silicon circuitry. Thus, most cellular with a specific atom in the crystal.
es off the CDs microcode of pits and telephones have gallium arsenide cir- Above the band gap is the conduction
spaces before shining onto semiconduc- cuitry, within which electrons move fast- band, consisting of higher-energy states
tor photodetectors for eventual conver- er than they do inside silicon, enabling in which electrons are no longer associ-
sion into sound. The heart of this laser higher-frequency operation. Hardwired ated with individual atoms and can
is an exquisitely thin stripe of gallium telephone systems, too, rely on nonsili- flow relatively freely. Hence, the band
arsenide sandwiched between slices of con semiconductors. Costly high-quali- gap is the amount of energy, measured
gallium aluminum arsenide, which is ty semiconductor lasers made of indi- in electron volts, that is required to
more electrically insulating. The infra- um gallium arsenide phosphide, for ex- cause electrons to leap from the valence
red light emitted from this sandwich is ample, send light-encoded data and band, over the band gap and into the
produced when electrons and positively voice signals down optical fibers. conduction band.
charged electron deficiencies (called What most of these applications have Once in the conduction band, the elec-
holes) recombine, annihilating one an- in common is that they are all related to trons can carry current or fall back
other and releasing photons. the generation and detection of light. across the band gap to the valence band.
Telephony is another stronghold of The one thing that silicon cannot do is When this latter event occurs, the elec-
nonsilicon semiconductors. In order to produce light, laments Harvey Serreze, tron typically falls into an empty bond-
transmit effectively at low power, cellu- operations manager of the optoelectron- ing site, or electron deficiency, vacated
commonly, these crystals consist of hun- and expensive cooling system needed to
dreds of layers, many no more than counter the heat produced by the chips. IVAN AMATO, a freelance writer
several atoms wide and each consisting That was such a huge undertaking that based in Silver Spring, Md., is the au-
of a chemical compound that the crys- it could not find customers, explains thor of Stuff, published earlier this year
tal grower essentially dials in. A key ad- Ira Deyhimy, vice president of product by BasicBooks.
3 Continues
least as large as those seen in the past 50. This estimate means that one
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 85
Every 18 months microprocessors double
in speed. Within 25 years, one computer will be
as powerful as all those in Silicon Valley today
MICROPROCESSORS IN 2020
by David A. Patterson
Also in the interest of making faster gle fast processor by engaging many in- (foreground). The dies can be bigger in
chips, designers have begun to include expensive ones at the same time. In our part because the manufacturing process
more hardware to process more tasks analogy, we would go to a laundromat (one stage shown in inset) is cleaner.
lines, but it need not be so. Perhaps in the computing plays such a large role in
near future, processors and memory will our world now. Looking ahead, micro-
be merged onto a single chip, just as the processor performance will easily keep
CLEAN ROOMS, where wafers are microprocessor first merged the separate doubling every 18 months through the
made, are designed to keep human han- components of a processor onto a single turn of the century. After that, it is hard
dling and airborne particles to a mini- chip. To narrow the processor-memory to bet against a curve that has out-
mum. A single speck of dust can damage performance gap, to take advantage of stripped all expectations. But it is plau-
a tiny transistor. parallel processing, to amortize the costs sible that we will see improvements in
of the line and simply to make full use the next 25 years at least as large as those
of the phenomenal number of transis- seen in the past 50. This estimate means
career, only three new technologies have tors that can be placed on a single chip, that one desktop computer in 2020 will
prevailed: microprocessors, random-ac- I predict that the high-end microproces- be as powerful as all the computers in
cess memory and optical fibers. And sor of 2020 will be an entire computer. Silicon Valley today. Polishing my crys-
their impact has yet to wane, decades Lets call it an IRAM, standing for tal ball to look yet another 25 years
after their debut. intelligent random-access memory, since ahead, I see another quantum jump in
Surely one or two more inventions will most of the transistors on this merged computing power.
revise computing in the next 25 years. chip will be devoted to memory. Where- The implications of such a breathtak-
My guess, though, is that the stored pro- as current microprocessors rely on hun- ing advance are limited only by our
gram concept is too elegant to be easily dreds of wires to connect to external imaginations. Fortunately, the editors
replaced. I believe future computers will memory chips, IRAMs will need no more have asked others to ponder the possi-
be much like machines of the past, even than computer network connections and bilities, and I happily pass the baton on
if they are made of very different stuff. I a power plug. All input-output devices to them. SA
The Author
DAVID A. PATTERSON has taught since 1977 at the University books and consulted for many companies, including Digital, Intel
of California, Berkeley, where he now holds the E. H. and M. E. and Sun Microsystems. As a result of writing the original version of
Pardee Chair in Computer Science. He is a member of the National this article in 1995, he decided the following year to focus his re-
Academy of Engineering and is a fellow of both the Institute of Elec- search on intelligent random-access memory (IRAM). Some of the
trical and Electronic Engineers and the Association for Computing fruits of his work in this area are described on his World Wide Web
Machinery. He has won several teaching awards, co-authored five site at http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/
Further Reading
Microprocessors: From Desktops to Supercomputers. F. Bas- Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Soft-
kett and J. L. Hennessy in Science, Vol. 261, pages 864871; Au- ware Interface. Second edition. D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hen-
gust 13, 1993. nessy. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1997.
Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach. Second Follow the reference on the World Wide Web at http://cra.org:80/
edition. D. A. Patterson and J. L. Hennessy. Morgan Kaufmann research.impact/ and look under RISC to learn more about the
Publishers, 1995. rapid rise in processor performance.
ing polyacetylene, for instance, workers now routinely make the material
conduct 50,000 amperes per volt per centimeter, up from 60 in the first re-
ports. Some investigators have even managed to make polyacetylene con-
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 91
Conducting duct about one quarter as well as copper. ty of Durham in England. Copper con-
Plastics at Work Such developments are extremely ducts 100,000 times as much current
Displayed are some devices that important for the whole conducting and costs half as much. Still, polyani-
might rely on electrically conducting field, MacDiarmid says. They exem- lines electrical performance is more
organic materials in the near future. plify how dedicated improvement in than adequate for some applications, he
chemical and molecular structure can insists: The kinds of things we are go-
lead to enormous advances in the phys- ing to replace are those that are compli-
ical and electrical properties. More- cated to manufacture, like braids on ca-
over, the conductivity is readily adjust- ble. Braids impart flexibility, permitting
COAXIAL CABLE ed. You can control the quality of the coaxial cable to wind around your living-
Polyaniline could metallic state by controlling the struc- room end table, for example, to reach the
replace copper in tural order of the polymer, notes Ar- cable television box. But weaving cop-
braided parts of the thur J. Epstein of Ohio State University. per wire into braids is a slow, laborious
cable. Appropriate Although other polymers are more task, Monkman explains. If workers
manufacturing conductive, polyaniline is emerging as could extrude polymer braids and lay
techniques are now
the material of choice for many appli- the insulation over the cable in a single
being sought.
cations. As one of the oldest of synthet- step, the speed of the manufacturing
ic organic polymers, its properties are would rise 10-fold, and the cost would
well known. The substancewhich re- plummet. In 1995 the University of
sembles the plastic used in 35-millimeter Durham agreed to a three-year make-
photographic filmis easily made, it is or-break deal with a cable company.
stable in air and its electronic properties There will be a product, or there will
are readily customized. Most impor- never be a product, he says ruefully.
tant, polyaniline is cheapthe most in-
expensive conducting polymer around. That Annoying Static Cling
In terms of geometry, it can also assume
diverse incarnations, including thin
films and patterned surfaces.
Polyaniline, which conducts up to
A lthough conducting organics could
find uses in virtually anything that
relies on electricity, solid-state electron-
about 500 amperes per volt per cen- ics probably offers the greatest number
timeter, will not replace copper wiring, of opportunities. At the moment, ob-
THIN-FILM however. We wont be as good as cop- serves Marie Angelopoulos of the IBM
TRANSISTORS per; we wont be as cheap as copper, Thomas J. Watson Research Center,
Flexible and admits Andy Monkman of the Universi- the largest market is electrostatic dissi-
ELECTROMAGNETIC transparent, these
SHIELDING components could
Incorporated into drive existing
computer cases, active-matrix FLEXIBLE DISPLAY
conducting poly- displays or The ultimate goal of organic display technology,
mers can block out all-plastic displays. such screens would combine the flexibility, con-
electromagnetic Demonstration ductivity and light-emitting ability of the materials.
interference in the transistors have Competition from liquid-crystal displays and mar-
megahertz range. been made. ket resistance may make them unlikely.
SMART WINDOWS
These windows
goal of
Ultimate goa
organic displ
display
technology, c combining
the flexibility,
conductivities and light
abili of the
emitting ability
materials.
would change
te goal
Ultimac display
organi logy,
techno
combining
the
of transparency and
color automatically.
ity,
flexibil s and
conductivitieg ability
light emittin als.
materi from
of the
Competitionl
liquid-crystaand
displays t resista
nce
Ultimat marke this
displaye goal of organic may make
combin technology,
automobiles use
make this
device unlikely.Fle
displaye goal of organic Display xible marke this
combin technology, Ultimate goal may make
conducing the flexibili of organic
display technology device ible
emittingtivities and light ty,
combining the , unlikely.Flex
materia ability of the conductivities flexibility,
y
Displa te goal of
ls.
from liquid-cCompe
rystal
tition emitting abilityand light Ultima
display of the
materials. Competitio orga
resistans and market from liquid-cryst n
device ce may make al
A
ls. Compe
from liquid-c
rystal
tition emitting abilityand light
display of the
materials. Competitio
resistans and market
mirrors.
from liquid-cryst n
device ce may make displays and al
unlikely
Display .Flexiblethis resistance may market
Ultimat make this
device unlikely.Fle
displaye goal of organic Display xible
combin technology, Ultimate goal
conduc ing the flexibili of organic
display technology
emittingtivities and light ty,
combining the ,
materia ability of the conductivities flexibility,
ls.
emitting abilityand light
materials. of the
+
SOLDER
4 Water-soluble polyaniline
2001 2002 2003 200
may replace the toxic, lead-
based solder now used, if its
conductivity can be boosted
by four orders of magnitude.
BATTERIES
Sales of rechargeable button cells have
thus far been weak, but new all-polymer
batteries producing higher voltages
might renew interest. Other forms of en-
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. ergy storage, such as capacitors, are also
being sought.
KARL GUDE
pation. Such charges are well known guard against spurious signals, Epstein
to wreak havoc on digital devices: esti- remarks. Conventional screening mate-
mates of electrostatic damage to elec- rials rely on impregnated bits of carbon
tronic equipment alone exceed $15 bil- or metal, which could harm the me-
lion yearly in the U.S., she notes. chanical properties of the base material CAMOUFLAGE
Contemporary protective packaging, at any points that bend. Although pro- COATINGS
which relies on ionic salts or resins filled posals relying on polymers are still more The U.S. military is
with metals or carbon, has some short- costly than present solutions, conduct- considering coatings
comings. The conductivities of ionic ma- ing polymers could be adulterated with and fabrics that are
terials tend to be low and unstable; metal other substances, such as nylon, to re- blended with con-
is expensive and heavy; and carbon poses duce the expense. BIOLOGICAL ducting polymers
a contamination hazard because bits of it Polymers could also be environmen- SENSORS to spoof radar.
can slough off during shipment. Poly- tally correct. IBMs PanAquas is soluble Conductivity of
mers should be easier to handle and able in water (ordinarily, the polymer must polymer tags would
to dissipate electrostatic charges more ef- be processed with organic solvents). If change depending
ficiently. As a bonus, polyaniline coatings Angelopoulos and her colleagues could on exposure time
above a threshold
also happen to be highly transparent. In increase the conductivity of the water- temperature and
the summer of 1997 IBM began licensing soluble polyaniline, the material could would be remotely
the production of one such material, replace the lead-based solder used to read by a scanner.
PanAquas. connect electronics parts on a substrate. Sensors for aromas,
The dissipative abilities of polymers MacDiarmid explains that outdated enzymes and
also make them ideal for electromagnet- equipment poses an environmental haz- pesticides are now
ic shielding. Such protection is necessary ard and an economic nuisance: In being used for
to keep electrical signals among compo- many parts of Europe the manufacturer quality control and
nents from overlappingthe reason air- must remove all lead-containing materi- safety analysis.
lines request that portable electronics be al from discarded printed circuit boards,
turned off during takeoff and landing. which is one hell of a job.
(The shielding would not benefit those
concerned about the potential health ef- The All-Plastic Transistor
fects of power lines, however, because
the frequencies of the fields are much
lower than these screens can block.) In-
corporated into the plastic cases of elec-
T he ultimate achievement in elec-
tronics application, however, would
be a component fabricated out of poly-
tronic equipment, the polymers can mers. Using ordinary circuit-printing
MEDICAL SU
PPLIE
9:15
2
COOK
19:54
WASH
ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE
Simple tweezers, ANTISTATIC
made from strips MATERIALS
of polymers with dif- LIGHT-EMITTING
DIODES Polymers that
ferent conductivities, dissipate electro- IL
-1
2
CHARLES OREAR
applied across the two layers, the re-
searchers were able to vary the color of
the emitted light from red through yel-
low to green. POLYMER SHEETS made of polyaniline appear as a lustrous pink (left) until doped
In March 1997 Jenekhe and his col- with iodine, which makes the substance conduct and colors it blue (right). Weigong
leagues were finally able to produce an Zheng of the University of Pennsylvania prepared the material.
organic plastic material that emitted
blue light, and in the summer of 1997
researchers at Princeton University and emerges from only one end, more of it the chemical makeup of PPV, they have
the University of Southern California reaches the viewer, unlike the light from also teased the full range of colors out
created a bright, red-green-blue organic conventional diode structures, which of the devices. In 1996 several research-
LED whose color can be independently leaks wastefully in all directions. es showed that PPV can even lase.
controlled. Before these accomplish- The potentially higher efficiency may So far, however, polymer LEDs have
ments can be developed into a product, also boost the longevity. Current that is plenty of drawbacks. Lifetime issues
however, several significant issues must not transformed into light becomes are clearly key to making this curiosity
be resolved, including the stability of waste heat, which hastens a diodes de- into a business, remarks Heeger, now
these organic materials over long peri- mise. Because a microcavity LED would at the University of California at Santa
ods. In the meantime, researchers are in- require less current for the same amount Barbara. Most polymer LEDs burn for
vestigating other potential uses for the of light, it should in principle last longer. only a few hundred hours, but 2,000 to
plastic light emitters, including back- 10,000 hours is desirable. The main
lights for liquid-crystal displays. Polymer Lights cause is inefficiency. The polymer LEDs
All the devices built so far, though, convert no more than 4 percent of the
have been too dim and inefficient. One
solution for increasing the brightness
and efficiency may be an alternative ar-
O ther investigators are trying to de-
velop LEDs made from polymers
instead of small organic molecules. The
current sent through them into light;
the rest is transformed into waste heat.
Hence, the diode can shine quite bright-
chitecture. An approach that has shown most widely used polymers are poly-p- ly, but the high voltage necessary to
some promise was unveiled recently at phenylenevinylene, or PPV for short, and achieve that intensity comes at the price
Bell Laboratories (now part of Lucent its derivatives. Richard H. Friend of the of faster breakdown.
Technologies), where Ananth Dodabal- Cavendish Laboratory at the University Improved processing might extend
apur and his colleagues constructed elec- of Cambridge and his associates dis- PPVs life; during manufacturing, un-
troluminescent devices by sandwiching covered the green-yellow glow of PPV wanted reactions can create defects on
layers of Alq and inert material between in 1990. By combining that material the polymer chain, which interfere with
two reflecting surfaces. Structured this with electrodes made from other poly- PPVs ability to glow. Shelf life is also a
way, the layers conform to the physics mers or from flexible metal backings drawback; at the moment, PPV diodes
of a Fabry-Perot cavitythe basic struc- (like the foil that keeps supermarket na- last only several months in storage be-
ture of most lasers. The emissive Alq chos fresh), researchers have produced cause they are unstable in air, reacting
sends out light that bounces back and flexible LEDs that give off 2.5 lumens with oxygen and water vapor. Better
forth, amplifying until it leaks out one per watt. Driven at 10 volts, the light is packaging might help.
end. (This type of microcavity yielded about as bright as the fluorescent lamp Still, polymer LEDs are close to being
true lasing in 1996.) Because the light in a liquid-crystal display. By varying sufficiently bright and efficient for
Quantum-Mechanical
Computers
by Seth Lloyd
E very two years for the past 50, computers have become twice as fast while their
components have become half as big. Circuits now contain wires and transistors
that measure only one hundredth of a human hair in width. Because of this ex-
plosive progress, todays machines are millions of times more powerful than their crude
ancestors. But explosions do eventually dissipate, and integrated-circuit technology is
running up against its limits.
Advanced lithographic techniques can yield parts 1/100 the size of what is currently avail-
able. But at this scalewhere bulk matter reveals itself as a crowd of individual atoms
integrated circuits barely function. A tenth the size again, the individuals assert their iden-
tity, and a single defect can wreak havoc. So if computers are to become much smaller in
the future, new technology must replace or supplement what we now have.
98 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.
Several decades ago pioneers such as Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett, both at
the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, began investigating the physics of informa-
tion-processing circuits, asking questions about where miniaturization might lead: How
small can the components of circuits be made? How much energy must be used up in the
course of computation? Because computers are physical devices, their basic operation is
described by physics. One physical fact of life is that as the components of computer cir-
cuits become very small, their description must be given by quantum mechanics.
In the early 1980s Paul Benioff of Argonne National Laboratory built on Landauer and
Bennetts earlier results to show that a computer could in principle function in a purely quan-
tum-mechanical fashion. Soon after, David Deutsch of the Mathematical Institute at the Uni-
versity of Oxford and other scientists in the U.S. and Israel began to model quantum-me-
chanical computers to find out how they might differ from classical ones. In particular, they
wondered whether quantum-mechanical effects might be exploited to speed computations
or to perform calculations in novel ways.
By the middle of the decade, the field languished for several reasons. First, all these re-
searchers had considered quantum computers in the abstract instead of studying actual
physical systemsan approach that Landauer faulted on many counts. It also became ev-
ident that a quantum-mechanical computer might be prone to errors and have trouble cor-
recting them. And apart from one suggestion, made by Richard Feynman of the Califor-
nia Institute of Technology, that quantum computers might be useful for simulating oth-
er quantum systems (such as new or unobserved forms of matter), it was unclear that
they could solve mathematical problems any faster than their classical cousins.
In the past few years, the picture has changed. In 1993 I described a large class of familiar
physical systems that might act as quantum computers in ways that avoid some of Lan-
dauers objections. Peter W. Shor of AT&T Bell Laboratories has demonstrated that a quan-
tum computer could be used to factor large numbersa task that can foil the most powerful
of conventional machines. And in 1995, workshops at the Institute for Scientific Inter-
change in Turin, Italy, spawned many designs for constructing quantum circuitry. More
recently, H. Jeff Kimbles group at Caltech and David J. Winelands team at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology have built some of these prototype parts, whereas
David Cory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Isaac Chuang of Los Ala-
BORIS STAROSTA
mos National Laboratory have demonstrated simple versions of my 1993 design. This
article explains how quantum computers might be assembled and describes some of the
astounding things they could do that digital computers cannot.
Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. Scientific American: The Solid-State Century 99
Quantum Logic Gates
STANDARD COPY, in the quantum world, relies on the interaction between two differ-
INITIAL FINAL CIRCUIT ent atoms. Imagine one atom, A, storing either a 0 or 1, sitting next to an-
NOT GATE STATE STATE NOTATION
other atom, B, in its ground state. The difference in energy between the
states of B will be a certain value if A is 0, and another value if A is 1. Now ap-
0 1 ply a pulse of light whose photons have an energy equal to the latter
amount. If the pulse is of the right intensity and duration and if A is 1, B will
absorb a photon and flip (top row); if A is 0, B cannot absorb a photon from
A ABSORBS PHOTON the pulse and stays unchanged (bottom row). So, as in the diagram below, if
A is 1, B becomes 1; if A is 0, B remains 0.
1 0 STANDARD
CIRCUIT
COPY INITIAL STATES FINAL STATES NOTATION
A A GATE
1
NOT involves nothing more than bit flipping, as the 1
1
notation above shows: if A is 0, make it a 1, and vice
versa. With atoms, this can be done by applying a B ABSORBS PHOTON
pulse whose energy equals the difference between 0
As ground state (its electron is in its lowest energy 0
level, shown as the inner ring) and its excited state 0
(shown as the outer ring). Unlike conventional NOT
MICHAEL GOODMAN
Lets face it, quantum mechanics is chunks, called photons, which might posing its true position. In principle,
weird. Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist be considered the particles that make basketballs could be both here and there
who helped to invent the field, said, up light waves. at once as well (even in the absence of
Anyone who can contemplate quantum A second consequence is that quan- Michael Jordan). In practice, however,
mechanics without getting dizzy hasnt tum-mechanical waves, like water waves, the time it takes for a photon to bounce
properly understood it. For better or can be superposed, or added together. off a ball is too brief for the eye or any
worse, quantum mechanics predicts a Taken individually, these waves offer a instrument to detect. The ball is simply
number of counterintuitive effects that rough description of a given particles po- too big for its exact location to go un-
have been verified experimentally again sition. When two or more such waves are detected for any perceivable amount of
and again. To appreciate the weirdness combined, though, the particles position time. Consequently, as a rule only small,
of which quantum computers are capa- becomes unclear. In some weird quan- subtle things exhibit quantum weirdness.
ble, we need accept only a single strange tum sense, then, an electron can some-
fact called wave-particle duality. times be both here and there at the same Quantum Information
Wave-particle duality means that time. Such an electrons location will re-
things we think of as solid particles,
such as basketballs and atoms, behave
under some circumstances like waves
main unknown until some interaction
(such as a photon bouncing off the elec-
tron) reveals it to be either here or there
I nformation comes in discrete chunks,
as do atomic energy levels in quan-
tum mechanics. The quantum of infor-
and that things we normally describe as but not both. mation is the bit. A bit of information is
waves, such as sound and light, occa- When two superposed quantum waves a simple distinction between two alter-
sionally behave like particles. In essence, behave like one wave, they are said to nativesno or yes, 0 or 1, false or true. In
quantum-mechanical theory sets forth be coherent; the process by which two digital computers, the voltage between
what kind of waves are associated with coherent waves regain their individual the plates in a capacitor represents a bit
what kind of particles, and vice versa. identities is called decoherence. For an of information: a charged capacitor reg-
The first strange implication of wave- electron in a superposition of two differ- isters a 1 and an uncharged capacitor, a
particle duality is that small systems such ent energy states (or, roughly, two dif- 0. A quantum computer functions by
as atoms can exist only in discrete ener- ferent positions within an atom), deco- matching the familiar discrete character
gy states. So when an atom moves from herence can take a long time. Days can of digital information processing to the
one energy state to another, it absorbs pass before a photon, say, will collide strange discrete character of quantum
and emits energy in exact amounts, or with an object as small as an electron, ex- mechanics.
quantum bits, the Caltech and NIST computer cannot create. The random- Our intuition for quantum mechanics
groups have performed quantum logic number programs in digital computers is spoiled early on in life. A one-year-old
operations on just two bits (leading some actually generate pseudorandom num- playing peekaboo knows that a face is
wags to comment that a two-bit micro- bers, using a function whose output is there even when she cannot see it. Intu-
processor is just a two-bit microproces- so irregular that it seems to produce bits ition is built up by manipulating objects
sor). In 1997, however, Neil A. Gershen- by chance. over and over again; quantum mechan-
feld of M.I.T., together with Chuang of ics seems counterintuitive because we
Los Alamos, showed that my 1993 Multiparticle Quantum States grow up playing with classical toys. One
method for performing quantum com- of the best uses of quantum logic is to
puting using the double resonance meth-
ods described above could be realized
using nuclear spins at room tempera-
I magine what a quantum computer
can do with two bits. Copying works
by putting together two bits, one with a
expand our intuition by allowing us to
manipulate quantum objects and play
with quantum toys such as photons and
ture. The same result was obtained in- value to be copied and one with an electrons.
dependently by M.I.T.s Cory, working original value of 0; an applied pulse The more bits one can manipulate,
with Amr Fahmy and Timothy F. Havel flips the second bit to 1 only if the first the more fascinating the phenomena one
of Harvard Medical School. With con- bit is also 1. But if the value of the first can create. I have shown that with more
ventional magnets of the kind used to bit is a superposition of 0 and 1, then bits, a quantum computer could be used
perform magnetic resonance imaging, the applied pulse creates a superposi- to simulate the behavior of any quan-
Chuang and Cory both succeeded in tion involving both bits, such that both tum system. When properly programmed,
performing quantum logic operations are 1 or both are 0. Notice that the final the computers dynamics would become
on three bits, with the prospect of con- value of the first bit is no longer the same exactly the same as the dynamics of
structing 10-bit quantum microproces- as it was originallythe superposition some postulated system, including that
sors in the near future. has changed. systems interaction with its environ-
Thus, as it stands, scientists can con- In each component of this superposi- ment. And the number of steps the com-
trol quantum logic operations on a few tion, the second bit is the same as the puter would need to chart the evolution
bits, and in the near future, they might first, but neither is the same as the orig- of this system over time would be direct-
well do quantum computations using a inal bit. Copying a superposition state ly proportional to the size of the system.
few tens or hundreds of bits. How can results in a so-called entangled state, in Even more remarkable, if a quantum
this possibly represent an improvement which the original information no computer had a parallel architecture,
over classical computers that routinely longer resides in a single quantum bit which could be realized through the ex-
handle billions of bits? In fact, even with but is stored instead in the correlations ploitation of the double resonance be-
one bit, a quantum computer can do between qubits. Albert Einstein noted tween neighboring pairs of spins in the
things no classical computer can. Con- that such states would violate all classi- atoms of a crystal, it could mimic any
sider the following. Take an atom in a cal intuition about causality. In such a quantum system in real time, regardless
superposition of 0 and 1. Now find out superposition, neither bit is in a definite of its size. This kind of parallel quantum
whether the bit is a 1 or a 0 by making state, yet if you measure one bit, there- computation, if possible, would give a
it fluoresce. Half of the time, the atom by putting it in a definite state, the other huge speedup over conventional meth-
emits a photon, and the bit is a 1. The bit also enters into a definite state. The ods. As Feynman noted, to simulate a
other half of the time, no photon is emit- change in the first bit does not cause the quantum system on a classical comput-
ted, and the bit is a 0. That is, the bit is change in the second. But by virtue of de- er generally requires a number of steps
The Author
SETH LLOYD is the Finmeccanica Career Development Profes- physics from the Rockefeller University in 1988. He has held post-
sor in the mechanical engineering department at the Massachusetts doctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and at
Institute of Technology. He received his first graduate degree in phi- Los Alamos National Laboratory, and since 1989 he has been an
losophy from the University of Cambridge in 1984 and his Ph.D. in adjunct assistant professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
Further Reading
Quantum-Mechanical Models of Turing Machines That Science, Vol. 261, pages 15691571; September 17, 1993.
Dissipate No Energy. Paul Benioff in Physical Review Letters, Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Loga-
Vol. 48, No. 23, pages 15811585; June 7, 1982. rithms and Factoring. Peter W. Shor in 35th Annual Sympo-
Quantum Theory: The Church-Turing Principle and the sium on Foundations of Computer Science: Proceedings. Edited by
Universal Quantum Computer. David Deutsch in Proceedings Shafi Goldwasser. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1994.
of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Vol. 400, No. 1818, Quantum Computations with Cold Trapped Ions. J. I. Cirac
pages 97117; 1985. and P. Zoller in Physical Review Letters, Vol. 74, No. 20, pages
A Potentially Realizable Quantum Computer. Seth Lloyd in 40914094; May 15, 1995.
P
like the architecture of PCs now, will consist of a central
processing unit (CPU), memory and input/output (I/O)
rediction is fraught with peril. The sudden ar- devices. The CPU (for example, a Motorola PowerPC chip
rival in our culture of tens of millions of per- or an Intel Pentium II) does the brainwork, manipulating
sonal computers, however, necessarily makes data. Memory, which includes random-access memory,
one ponder what the near future will bring. Although the or RAM, stores the information, such as the data that the
personal computer lets users perform many different use- CPU is currently using. Meanwhile the I/O devices literal-
ful or entertaining tasks, such as writing letters, playing ly do just that, providing the means for information to
games, sending e-mail or surfing the World Wide Web, it flow into and out of the computer. Typical I/O devices in-
may already bein its current incarnationin its last days. clude those designed for interaction, such as the key-
Rather than interact solely with a personal computer, board, screen and mouse; those involved with storage
users will engage a personal network, which is already for example, disks and CD-ROMs (compact disc, read-
evolving from todays personal computer and its related only memory); and those that serve as communications
devices. The current PCs capabilities barely scratch the devices (modems and Ethernet LAN cards).
surface of what the future may have in store. The In the conventional PC, the CPU, memory and I/O de-
changeover could be well along within a decade. vices are connected via one or more buses, circuits that
The typical personal network (PN) will consist of one provide the communications link making it possible for
or more computing devices in communication with one the various components of the PC to share data.
another, via a mix of permanent and transient communi- In the PN, the network itself is, in effect, the bus: the
cations links. At least one of the devices in a PN will be network architecture implies data flow in any and all di-
recognizable as a descendant of todays ubiquitous PC. rections, with the individual computers fully aware of the
Resembling current high-end laptops, this device will be network and its constituents. Like the members of a
the primary portal by which the user will access the net- baseball team interacting to make a play, member devices
work. (The portal will also function as a conventional PC in the network will often work together. Just as players
when it is disconnected from the rest of the PN.) come to bat individually, however, each network member
In fact, rudimentary PNs already exist. Recently one of will operate some of the time without linking to other de-
us (Friedlander) was working at home and had two lap- vices in the network.
top computers and a desktop computer linked together Some of these individual devices within the PN will be
in a tiny local-area network (LAN). I was using two of dedicated to you, its owner, whereas others will be shared
the machines while moving information to them from the with other users, via their PNs. Again, the primary means
third. My wife happened by during this episode. She for you to access the PN will be a portable computer re-
watched for a moment and then asked if I knew how sil- sembling a high-end laptop. This unit will be dedicated to
DAVID SUTER
you. Other parts of the network could dar for the day. During your last mo- mation onto your laptop. This includes
include computing devices embedded in ments of sleep, the PN collected infor- items stored on a server within your
your home, in your appliances or in mation from various news outlets, as- PN, such as the newspaper, your calen-
your car. Because other family members signing them priorities based on per- dar and the documents that you revised
will no doubt have their own PNs, some sonal-interest profiles you had created. since arriving home last night. In con-
of these individual devices could be part It turned up the temperature in part of trast to todays laptop, which houses all
of multiple PNs. Various servers, which your home (waiting that extra half an your data, the PN laptop carries only
are relatively powerful computers that hour today) and instructed your cof- copies of data from servers on your PN
anchor the network by performing com- feemaker to brew up a fresh pot. and on your office and other networks.
putationally intensive services for less When you sat down to drink your first Thus, the data are decentralized and
powerful computers on the network, will cup of coffee, a thin but meaty morning can be updated whenever necessary.
manage the PNs and their data stores. newspaper was hot off your printer, This structure is part of what provides
These servers will be shared among a specifically tailored to appeal to your the ability to recover information fully
number of PNs, but the individual PNs concerns. Via voice communication and and easily when a single computing de-
will remain logically separated. a large, flat-screen display, your PN vice fails.
One of the qualities of the PN that notifies you that one of its computing As you check your tie in the mirror,
will make it so versatile will be its dy- devices has failed. Not to worry, how- the PN notifies the navigation comput-
namic and seamless linking to the PNs ever: the network has already er in your car of your departure
of family members, friends or groups submitted a repair order, and, time and destination this
with a common interest, as well as to by the way, no data were morning. The network
shared environments, such as the home lost, thanks to automatic switches the laptop over
or office. A combination of wire-based backups in other net- to sleep mode to con-
and wireless communications will make work devices. You could serve battery life and to
it possible to establish links to other read the paper on the allow you to discon-
PNs anywhere in the world, whenever display, but you still nect it from its link. As
you need to. prefer to actually hold you leave the house,
it in your hands. As the car engine roars to
DAVID SUTER
A Day in the Life you check last nights life. Your vocal com-
box scores for the two mand unlocks the door.
Open, Says Me
The Authors
BRAD FRIEDLANDER and MARTYN ROETTER are both nology. Roetter currently focuses on assisting network operators
principals in the management and technology consulting firm and their equipment suppliers as they apply new broadband trans-
Arthur D. Little, based in Cambridge, Mass. Friedlander helps the mission and switching technologies and network architectures to
firms customers worldwide make effective use of information tech- deploy new services to their customers.
Further Reading
Being Digital. Nicholas Negroponte. Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. No. 6; March 25, 1997.
Computers. Egil Juliussen in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 34, No. 1, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will
pages 4954; January 1997. Change Our Lives. Michael Dertouzos. HarperSanFrancisco
The PC of the Future. Special issue of PC Magazine, Vol. 16, (HarperCollins), 1997.
112 Scientific American: The Solid-State Century Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc.