
A new material helps transistors become vanishingly small - prostoalex
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/07/18/a-new-material-helps-transistors-become-vanishingly-small
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riidom
Another article on the topic: [https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-amorphous-
boron-nitride-...](https://techxplore.com/news/2020-06-amorphous-boron-
nitride-excellent-insulating.html)

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blp
[https://nanohub.org/resources/18349/download/NikonovBeyondCM...](https://nanohub.org/resources/18349/download/NikonovBeyondCMOS_2_beyondCMOS.pdf)

Has nice models and details on post cmos, for the curious. The papers (nikonov
and young) are excellent, though I think they underrate the back end scaling
challenges.

This is about replacing the low k dielectric in the backend, and makes sense
if you consider that backend metal will move to W or Co. so long as this is
CMP capable (maybe?) this makes sense.

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ur-whale
[https://archive.is/O9fBP](https://archive.is/O9fBP)

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ncmncm
BN looks interesting, but it doesn't matter how good an insulator is if, in
use, its thickness approaches the wavelength of your charge carrier, enough so
to tunnel through easily. For reference, the wavelength of an electron "at
rest" is ~0.1 nm, but QM rarely conforms to simple arithmetical intuition.

My expectations for continuation of Moore's law are pinned, possibly too
optimistically, on spintronics.

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mojomark
I became fascinated with spintronics for about a year. Somewhat unrelated, but
perhaps interesting to some readers, is that you can create spin-LEDs. If you
use a material to permit only electrons of a certain spin (spin-up or spin-
down) to transport to the excitation layer of the LED, the resultant emitted
photons will be helically polarized. Fascinating stuff.

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radarsat1
Interesting, is that what is used for stereoscopic video screens?

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mojomark
Good question, but I'm 99.9999% sure no. They may us Circularly Polarized
light (I actually don't know), but if they do it's made by filtration of
unpolarized light rather than polarized electroluminescence. When I was
researching the topic (~2008-ish), Spin-LEDs were largely still in the lab - a
lot of work at Stanford spintronics lab as I recall. At that time, they were
able to achieve a strong bias of circularly polarized light. I just googled it
and apparently there's beed good progress in 'purifying' the polarization
handedness [1]. If you can harness CP emission, it opens the door for many
very interesting applications. CP light is fascinating.

1\. [https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-
of...](https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-
spie/11090/1109034/Recent-progress-in-spin-LED--realization-of-pure-
circular/10.1117/12.2527862.short?SSO=1)

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radarsat1
Very cool, thanks for answer and the paper link!

