“The concept brings together an assortment of existing nanoscale technologies and combines them in a new way,” said Dr Joseph Friedman, pictured.
The all-carbon spin logic computing system could be made smaller than silicon transistors with increased performance. Dr Friedman’s all-carbon spintronic switch functions as a logic gate that relies on the fact that an electric current moving through a wire creates a magnetic field. Similarly, a magnetic field near a graphene nanoribbon affects the current flowing through the ribbon. Traditional silicon based transistors cannot exploit this phenomenon; instead, they are connected wires.
In Dr Friedman’s spintronic circuit design, electrons moving through carbon nanotubes create a magnetic field that affects the flow of current in a nearby graphene nanoribbon, providing cascaded logic gates that are not connected physically.
Because communication takes place via an electromagnetic waves, Dr Friedman expects that communication will be much faster – with the potential for terahertz clock speeds. In addition, carbon materials can be made smaller than silicon-based transistors.
