5 nanometer

The 5 nanometer (5 nm) node is the technology node following the 7 nm node. The exact naming of this technology node comes from Intel's technology outlook. Although Intel has not yet divulged any certain plans to manufacturers or retailers, their current roadmap projects an end-user release by approximately 2022.^[1][2] According to Bob Colwell, at 5 nm will be the end of the Moore's Law.^[3]

Technology demos

In 2006, a team of Korean researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the National Nano Feb Center codeveloped a 3 nm transistor, the world's smallest nanoelectronic device based on conventional technology, called a fin field-effect transistor (FinFET).^[4][5] It is the smallest transistor ever produced.

In 2010, an Australian team announced that they fabricated a single functional transistor out of 7 atoms that measured 4 nm in length.^[6][7][8]

In 2012 a single atom transistor was fabricated using a phosphorus atom bound to a silicon surface (between two significantly larger electrodes). This transistor could be said to be a 180 pm transistor (the Van der Waals radius of a phosphorus atom); though its covalent radius bound to silicon is likely smaller.^[9] Making transistors smaller than this will require either using elements with a smaller atomic radius, or using subatomic particles—like electrons or protons—as functional transistors.

Successors

Continuing the pattern of halving the surface area of each node (or reducing the square sides by 1.4) every two years, it can be expected that 4 nm technology will appear in roughly 2022, 3 nm in 2024, 2 nm in 2026, and lastly 1 nm in 2029, which may be the limit for current lithographic semiconductor silicon technology as presently implemented.^[10] As a result 2030 and beyond may see a shift in technology to enable smaller components in the form of silicene or silicon nanotubes or a move towards other processing methods such as quantum computing.

Transistors one atom thick and ten atoms wide have been made by UK researchers. They were carved from graphene, predicted by some to one day oust silicon as the basis of future computing. Graphene is a material made from flat sheets of carbon in a honeycomb arrangement, and is a leading contender. A team at the University of Manchester, UK, have now used it to make some of the smallest transistors ever: devices only 1 nm across that contain just a few carbon rings.^[11]

References