IBM suggests Carbon Nanotubes Instead of Silicon for Chip production.

IBM researchers struggle to find a way to overcome the physical limitations to shrink silicon in future computer chips.Well, by experimenting on silicon Nanotubes, IBM says that this might do the job !

The company researchers believe to have found a way to overcome the physical limitations to shrink silicon in future computer chips. Through research IBM came with the suggestion that carbon nanotubes are key to smaller transistors as the material may be able to replace silicon at some point.

The tests proved that it is able to produce "10,000 working transistors made of nano-sized tubes of carbon" and place them "precisely" on a single chip using "standard semiconductor processes". The placement density was one billion carbon nanotubes per square centimeter. 

Of course, 10,000 transistors are not adequate to the number of more than 1 billion transistors that are placed on CPUs with today's technology. However, the precision rate of 99.8 percent, appears to be close to the required 99.999 percent, in order to achieve 1 billion transistors but, the extra 0.199 percent is a difficult goal to be achieved.

For the time being, maybe this could be a limitation. No matter what the outcome is, the company concluded that the material itself is also more attractive than silicon as electrons can move easier in carbon transistors than in silicon-based devices, which would result in faster chips.

So its a matter of time and research. IBM knows what to do and how to do it ! The truth is that having silicon Nanotubes, will change direction of chip technology resulting into faster chips, which means better performance and response in integrated systems (computers, smartphones, etc).