epdf.pub_nanotechnology-and-nanoelectronics-materials-devic

1 Historical Development
1.1 Miniaturization of Electrical and Electronic Devices
At present, development in electronic devices means a race for a constant decrease
in the order of dimension. The general public is well aware of the fact that we live
in the age of microelectronics, an expression which is derived from the size
(1 µm) of a device’s active zone, e.g., the channel length of a field effect transistor
or the thickness of a gate dielectric. However, there are convincing indications that
we are entering another era, namely the age of nanotechnology. The expression
“nanotechnology” is again derived from the typical geometrical dimension of an
electronic device, which is the nanometer and which is one billionth (10 9 ) of a
meter. 30,000 nm are approximately equal to the thickness of a human hair. It is
worthwhile comparing this figure with those of early electrical machines, such as
a motor or a telephone with their typical dimensions of 10 cm. An example of this
development is given in Fig. 1.1.
(a)
20 µm
(b)
(c)
Fig. 1.1 (a) Centimeter device (SMD capacity), (b) micrometer device (transistor in an
IC), and (c) nanometer device (MOS single transistor)