CIS 4930.1194X/6930.1078X Spr.'00
Week 4 Assignment:
Semiconductor Technology - Misc. Topics

Please continue to follow the general advice on reading assignments from the first week's assignment.

Reading assignment:

The class voted to spend this week covering advanced nano-scale electronic devices such as quantum dots and single-electron transistors.  By far the best survey article I know of on this area so far is the MITRE research organization's report on nanoelectronic devices, below.  This article has numerous references to lots of other articles you can obtain to get more depth.  The only problem is that it only relates developments through 1997. Slightly more recent and much shorter: This article is more recent and more specific, focused on a particular device-technique called the "quantum dot cellular automaton."  (I have some doubts about this whole approach.) Older but more detailed: See more papers by these authors at: Here's yet another idea for a device based on single-electron tunneling between islands.  The authors analyze its dissipation and show that it can be less than kT (this is possible because the device is reversible). Here are some other relevant articles I have, some of which I might put online.  Or, I might find some newer ones.
  • Mark A. Reed, "Quantum Dots," Scientific American, Jan. 1993, pp. 118-123. Will be on reserve
  • Bandyopadhyay et al., "Supercomputing with spin-polarized single electrons in a quantum coupled architecture,"  Nanotechnology 5(2):113-133, Apr. 1994. Will be on reserve.
  • If we have time, we will also cover the following area (the class's 2nd choice), but I haven't had time to gather many readings for this one yet.

    Advanced Semiconductor Device Structures

    SOI, double-gate FETs, quantum dots and related structures.

  • Xuejue Huang et al, "Sub 50-nm FinFET: PMOS", International Electron Devices Meeting 1999, PDF@http://www-inst.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/~xuejue/iedm-paper-new.pdf.
  • The class voted against pursuing the following areas in class, but you can delve into them yourself if you're interested.

    More on Scaling Limits of Semiconductor Technology

    Advanced Cooling Systems for Use With Semiconductor Technology

    Use of liquid coolant, thermoelectrics, heat pipes...  Need more articles....

    Written assignment #4: (due Fri. 2/11)

    This is our standing written assignment.  It should be on the subject of the above lectures and reading material, and it's due Friday, Feb. 11.