News and analysis on materials solutions to energy challenges
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EDITORIAL
Energy-efficient electronics science: Searching for a low-voltage switch ENERGY SECTOR ANALYSIS
Materials hurdles for advanced nuclear reactors ENERGY SECTOR ANALYSIS
Demands are high for low-power electronics
ENERGY QUARTERLY ORGANIZERS CHAIR M. Stanley Whittingham, State University of New York at Binghamton, USA Anshu Bharadwaj, Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy, India David Cahen, Weizmann Institute, Israel Russell R. Chianelli, The University of Texas at El Paso, USA George Crabtree, Argonne National Laboratory, USA Sabrina Sartori, University of Oslo, Norway Anke Weidenkaff, University of Stuttgart, Germany Steve M. Yalisove, University of Michigan, USA
Images incorporated to create the energy puzzle concept used under license from Shutterstock.com. Energy Sector Analysis ("Demands are high for low-power electronics") title image: Courtesy of Esther Rodriguez-Villegas, Imperial College London.
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Energy-efficient electronics science: Searching for a low-voltage switch Moore’s Law of miniaturization may be coming to an end, but there remains the prospect for further reduction in energy consumption in electronic chips by many orders of magnitude. Indeed, the energy used to manipulate a single bit of information is currently ~105 times greater than the theoretical limit. Progress demands a further improvement in material interface defect density, beyond what we have ever achieved before. While logic and storage are becoming ever more efficient, on-chip communication, whether by wires or by optical waveguides, is the main energy problem. In this viewpoint, transistors are communication devices rather than logic devices. Sensitivity, allowing low powering voltage, becomes the primary figure of merit, while carrier mobility is less important. In large measure, we have become too dependent on the transistor. As splendid as the transistor has been in defining the technology of our age, it suffers from a serious drawback. Its conduction is thermally activated and presently requires a powering voltage of approximately ~0.8 volts to provide a good On/Off current ratio. On the other hand, the wires of an electronic circuit could operate with a very good signal-tonoise ratio, even at powering voltages lower than 10 mV. Since power is proportional to voltage squared, we are currently penalized by up to ~105 in energy consumption. A more sensitive, lower-voltage switch is critically needed as the successor to the conventional transistor. Among the avenues being pursued are new, more sensitive semiconductor switches; sensitive nanomechanical switches; few-photon optical communication to replace electrical signaling via wires; and magnetic switches actuated by small currents on wires, exploiting, for example, the spin Hall effect. A much-studied candidate for the new, more sensitive electronic switch, a tunnel field-effect transistor, illustrated in Figure
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