A project funded by the army may improve 5G and mm-Wave technologies to overall, advance military communications and sensing equipment.
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"This milestone shows that carbon nanotubes, long thought to be a promising communications chip technology, can deliver," said Dr. Joe Qiu, program manager, solid state and electromagnetics at the Army Research Office. "The next step is scaling this technology, proving that it can work in high-volume manufacturing. Ultimately, this technology could help the Army meet its needs in communications, radar, electronic warfare and other sensing applications."
Findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Electronics.
For many years, carbon nanotubes were believed to suit high-frequency transistor technology because of its one-dimensional electron transport development. However, the challenge is to engineer high-purity semiconducting nanotubes into aligned arrays to create a functional device out of the nanomaterial.
Now, through a new deposition technology called ‘ZEBRA’ carbon nanotubes will be enabled to align and deposit onto a variety of substrates such as silicon, quartz, and silicon-on-insulator materials. This allows ZEBRA to overcome the challenge with heterogeneous integration by allowing to work efficiently with traditional CMOS digital logic circuits.
"With this exciting accomplishment, the timing is ripe to leverage our CMOS-compatible technology for the 5G and mm-Wave defense communication markets," said Carbonics' CEO Kos Galatsis. "We are now engaged in licensing and technology transfer partnerships with industry participants, while we continue to advance this disruptive RF technology."
Source: Science Daily
