Carbon nanotube transistors: Making electronics from molecules

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes are robust molecules with nanometer-scale diameters that can be used in field-effect transistors, from larger thin-film implementation to devices that work in conjunction with silicon electronics, and can potentially be used as a platform for high-performance digital electronics as well as radio-frequency and sensing applications. Recent progress in the materials, devices, and technologies related to carbon nanotube transistors is briefly reviewed. Emphasis is placed on the most broadly impactful advancements that have evolved from single-nanotube devices to implementations with aligned nanotubes and even nanotube thin films. There are obstacles that remain to be addressed, including material synthesis and processing control, device structure design and transport considerations, and further integration demonstrations with improved reproducibility and reliability; however, the integration of more than 10,000 devices in single functional chips has already been realized.

Internalization of subcellular-scale microfabricated chips by healthy and cancer cells

Continuous monitoring of physiological parameters inside a living cell will lead to major advances in our understanding of biology and complex diseases, such as cancer. It also enables the development of new medical diagnostics and therapeutics. Progress in nanofabrication and wireless communication has opened up the potential of making a wireless chip small enough that it can be wholly inserted into a living cell. To investigate how such chips could be internalized into various types of living single cells and how this process might affect cells' physiology, we designed and fabricated a series of multilayered micron-scale tag structures with different sizes as potential RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) cell trackers. While the present structures are test structures that do not resonate, the tags that do resonate have similar structure from device fabrication, material properties, and device size point of view. The structures are in four different sizes, the largest with the lateral dimension of 9 μm × 21 μm. The thickness for these structures is kept constant at 1.5 μm. We demonstrate successful delivery of our fabricated chips into various types of living cells, such as melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer and healthy/normal fibroblast skin cells. To our surprise, we observed a remarkable internalization rate difference between each cell type; the uptake rate was faster for more aggressive cancer cells than the normal/healthy cells. Cell viability before and after tag cellular internalization and persistence of the internalized tags have also been recorded over the course of five days of incubation. These results establish the foundations of the possibility of long term, wireless, intracellular physiological signal monitoring.

Transient Enhanced Diffusion and Dose Loss of Indium in Silicon

The dose loss and transient enhanced diffusion of indium in silicon were studied as a function of dose. Indium was implanted into silicon through a 90 A oxide at 50 keV for doses ranging from 3x 1012 to 2x14 cm−2. These conditions provide peak concentrations that approximately range from 1x1018-1x1020 cm−3. After an RTA anneal at 1000°C for 5s, indium exhibits substantial motion at both the tail and peak regions for high doses. The enhanced diffusion is mostly over within 5s. There was not any observable enhanced diffusion in the tail region at the lowest dose although there was significant movement at the peak region. The dose loss correlates very well with the enhancement in the diffusivity. TEM images show that the amorphization dose lies between 3x1013 and 8x1013 cm−2. In spite of the amorphization, diffusion enhancement in the tail region still keeps increasing with dose, which is contrary to a model of “+1” interstitials and complete removal of interstitials in the regrown layer. The 550°C lh anneals show that the dose loss can partially be attributed to the sweeping of the dopant by the growing a/c interface. Previously, the solubility of indium has been estimated to be around 1–2×1018 cm−3. At high doses, significant movement is observed at the peak of the indium profile although the peak concentration exceeds the solubility level by at least an order of magnitude. This shows that indium is not precipitating into an immobile phase like antimony or boron.