Current thinking

The semiconductor industry typically uses aluminum or copper for on-chip interconnectors. Now researchers from UK company

believe they have developed a machine, the NanoGrowth 1000n, that will effectively replace those materials with carbon nanotubes.

These have long been an attractive material for semiconductor applications because of their extraordinary mechanical and unique electronic properties, including exceptional current carrying capacity, which would lead to faster microprocessors.

The material has not been used in chips until now because no-one has developed a system that can grow nanotubes in an environment that is compatible with microchip production.

Microchips and transistors, such as the Pentium processor, are manufactured using what is known as the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. This must happen at a relatively low temperature window, between 200ºC and 380ºC, or the microchip could be destroyed. The tricky thing about integrating carbon nanotubes into the chips is that, traditionally, they have been grown under much higher temperatures.