“The concept brings together an assortment of existing nanoscale technologies and combines them in a new way,” said Dr. Joseph S. Friedman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT Dallas who conducted much of the research while he was a doctoral student at Northwestern University.
The resulting all-carbon spin logic proposal, published by lead author Friedman and several collaborators in the June 5 edition of the online journal Nature Communications, is a computing system that Friedman believes could be made smaller than silicon transistors, with increased performance.
Magnetoresistive GNR unzipped from carbon nanotube and controlled by two parallel CNTs on an insulating material above a metallic gate. As all voltages are held constant, all currents are unidirectional. The magnitudes and relative directions of the input CNT control currents ICTRL determine the magnetic fields B and GNR edge magnetization, and thus the magnitude of the output current IGNR.
Today’s electronic devices are powered by transistors, which are tiny silicon structures that rely on negatively charged electrons moving through the silicon, forming an electric current. Transistors behave like switches, turning current on and off.
In addition to carrying a charge, electrons have another property called spin, which relates to their magnetic properties. In recent years, engineers have been investigating ways to exploit the spin characteristics of electrons to create a new class of transistors and devices called “spintronics.”
Friedman’s all-carbon, spintronic switch functions as a logic gate that relies on a basic tenet of electromagnetics: As an electric current moves through a wire, it creates a magnetic field that wraps around the wire. In addition, a magnetic field near a two-dimensional ribbon of carbon — called a graphene nanoribbon — affects the current flowing through the ribbon. In traditional, silicon-based computers, transistors cannot exploit this phenomenon. Instead, they are connected to one another by wires. The output from one transistor is connected by a wire to the input for the next transistor, and so on in a cascading fashion.
In Friedman’s spintronic circuit design, electrons moving through carbon nanotubes — essentially tiny wires composed of carbon — create a magnetic field that affects the flow of current in a nearby graphene nanoribbon, providing cascaded logic gates that are not physically connected.
Because the communication between each of the graphene nanoribbons takes place via an electromagnetic wave, instead of the physical movement of electrons, Friedman expects that communication will be much faster, with the potential for terahertz clock speeds. In addition, these carbon materials can be made smaller than silicon-based transistors, which are nearing their size limit due to silicon’s limited material properties.
Nature Communications – Cascaded spintronic logic with low-dimensional carbon
Abstract
Remarkable breakthroughs have established the functionality of graphene and carbon nanotube transistors as replacements to silicon in conventional computing structures, and numerous spintronic logic gates have been presented. However, an efficient cascaded logic structure that exploits electron spin has not yet been demonstrated. In this work, we introduce and analyse a cascaded spintronic computing system composed solely of low-dimensional carbon materials. We propose a spintronic switch based on the recent discovery of negative magnetoresistance in graphene nanoribbons, and demonstrate its feasibility through tight-binding calculations of the band structure. Covalently connected carbon nanotubes create magnetic fields through graphene nanoribbons, cascading logic gates through incoherent spintronic switching. The exceptional material properties of carbon materials permit Terahertz operation and two orders of magnitude decrease in power-delay product compared to cutting-edge microprocessors. We hope to inspire the fabrication of these cascaded logic circuits to stimulate a transformative generation of energy-efficient computing.
Manipulation of the spin-degree of freedom for spintronic computing requires the invention of unconventional logic families to harness the unique mechanisms of spintronic switching devices. Cascading, one device directly driving another device, has been well known as a major challenge and fundamental requirement of a logic family since von Neumann’s 1945 proposal for a stored-program electronic computer. If the input and output signals are not of the same type and magnitude, it is difficult to connect devices without an additional device for translation. This extra device consumes power, time and area, and severely degrades the utility of the logic family.
Here we present an alternative paradigm for computing: all-carbon spin logic. This cascaded logic family creatively applies recent nanotechnological advances to efficiently achieve high-performance computing using only low-dimensional carbon materials. A spintronic switching device is proposed utilizing the negative magnetoresistance of graphene nanoribbon (GNR) transistors and partially unzipped carbon nanotubes (CNTs), unzipped from metallic CNT interconnect. These carbon gates can be cascaded directly; no additional intermediate devices are required between logic gates. The physical parameters necessary for proper switching operation are evaluated through mean-field tight-binding calculations of the band structure to enable an analysis of computational efficiency and to provide guidance for an experimental proof of concept. The results demonstrate the potential for compact all-carbon spin logic circuits with Terahertz operating speeds and two orders of magnitude improvement in power-delay product, thus motivating further investigation of the proposed device and computational structure.
SOURCES – University of Texas at Dallas, Nature Communications
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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