Transistor is an important electronic device, its size shrinks twice every 18 months, now it is more than 100 nanometers, by 2010 it was only a few tens of nanometers. What is used to connect the components of this ultra-high-density integrated circuit? A few days ago, the nano-cable developed by Professor Shuhong Yu of the University of Science and Technology of China, which is only four thousandths the thickness of a human hair, provides a way to solve this problem.
The nano-cables developed by Yu Shuhong and others have been enlarged nearly ten thousand times before they have the same thickness as ordinary cables. It consists of an inner core and an outer shell. The inner core is silver and the outer layer is covered with an insulator. The synthesis of nanocables in the past often required extremely harsh conditions such as high temperature, laser, and carbothermic reduction. The University of Science and Technology of China has made new progress in low-temperature chemical synthesis, using economical, gentle, and easy-to-operate solution synthesis methods. An expert from the American Chemical Society highly praised that it really provides a promising synthetic route for the synthesis of nano-cable structural materials.
"We have been able to make silver and copper inner cores. Experiments with other materials are underway. We can also adjust the size of the inner core and outer shell of the nano-cable arbitrarily to control its performance." Professor Yu told reporters, "We will build our own nano-micromachining operation platform so that we can freely straighten and bend nano-cables and cut them to the length required for connecting components.
It is reported that in addition to being used for the connection of high-density integrated components, nano-cables are the constituent elements of "vascular robots," and they are also very likely to lay the foundation for the generation of next-generation optical fibers. At present, experts from the University of Science and Technology of China are actively exploring the difference between the conductivity of nano-cables and ordinary cables.
