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Technology

Grad Student Makes Nanowires Just Three Atoms Thick 32

Science_afficionado (932920) writes "A Vanderbilt University graduate student, working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has discovered a way to create nanowires capable of linking transistors and other components made out of the monolayer material TMDC. His accomplishment is an important step toward creating monolayer microelectronic devices, which could be as thin and flexible as paper and extremely tough."
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Grad Student Makes Nanowires Just Three Atoms Thick

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  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Friday May 02, 2014 @03:06AM (#46897411) Homepage Journal

    Bit of a bugger really, he was trying for cheese on toast.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    But who gets the patent benefits.

    • I came in to post exactly this ; is he going to be like the guy who invented blue LEDs [japansociety.org] and sue to get some tiny fraction of reasonable compensation for his discovery?

    • It should be patently obvious.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Probably the university itself. Hey, remember when corporations did research at their own expense, like in the 1960s? Corporations have wised up since then, they socialize the boring, profit-less research to university students! Clever clever!

      And the nerds fight each other for the chance to pay for the privilege out of their own pockets!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      But who gets the patent benefits.

      Since the primary funding for the research was provided by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science, the patent should be in the public domain.

      But what do I know.

  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Friday May 02, 2014 @07:03AM (#46897987) Journal
    This technology could be exploited to produce new generation electron microscopes that utilize e-beam lithograghs with reduced splatter,

    and it has real promise to further the development of even tinier integrated circuits,

    it will probably end up being marginalized to manufacture paper thick television monitors.

  • Can you call something that thin a wire.

    Anyway Mattel would be interested in it. That company feels the waists of barbie dolls are not yet thin enough to induce self loathing and bad body self image in all the girls.

  • Is take a deep breath and enjoy it because if nano particle, tech, wire, and what not becomes main stream we will all have to wear expensive mask to breath or live in sealed domes.

    All tiny tech of this nature is an anathema to lungs and various other body parts.

  • by Goldsmith ( 561202 ) on Friday May 02, 2014 @09:50AM (#46899163)

    I will reserve my general snark regarding nanotechnology to highlight the fact these guys are putting the grad student up front and acknowledging that he really did all the work.

    Could it be? An ethical professor? Professor Pantelides, Vanderbilt and Oak Ridge deserve a ton of credit for breaking the traditional assignment-of-credit mold here. Good job guys.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      No kidding. (From a grad student sick of dealing with unethical professors)

  • by godel_56 ( 1287256 ) on Friday May 02, 2014 @06:44PM (#46904393)
    More info from TFA:

    Lin made the tiny wires from a special family of semiconducting materials that naturally form monolayers. These materials, called transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), are made by combining the metals molybdenum or tungsten with either sulfur or selenium. The best-known member of the family is molybdenum disulfide, a common mineral that is used as a solid lubricant.

    Other research groups have already created functioning transistors and flash memory gates out of TMDC materials. So the discovery of how to make wires provides the means for interconnecting these basic elements. Next to the transistors, wiring is one of the most important parts of an integrated circuit. Although today’s integrated circuits (chips) are the size of a thumbnail, they contain more than 20 miles of copper wiring.

Heisengberg might have been here.

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