Nanoelectronics

xi

Preface

Nano in its various formats (or allotropes to borrow the term from carbon)

has changed the landscape not only for electronics, but also for human

enterprise in planning the future of a community, state, country, and the

planet Earth. Nanoscience, nanotechnology, nanoengineering, and nano-

business are all moving targets, creating new start-ups among unlikely

partners. The complete nanoensemble, by its very nature, is a multi- and

interdisciplinary venture. Perhaps there is a need for engagement not only

for scientists and engineers, but also for thinkers, ethicists, lawyers, theo-

logians, and the nation’s politicians. Engineering, a process of synthesis, is

an engine of innovations, inventions, and growth. To quote Theodore von

Kármán, the California Institute of Technology’s provost during its forma-

tive years: “Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the

world that never was.” In other words, science is about being driven by curi-

osity to understand the world. Engineering is about using science to trans-

form the world. This book is an example of the unication of science and

engineering covering a journey from quantum physics to nanoengineering,

including a brief coverage of mind–body connections to capture the power

of brain waves and communication skills through checks and balances in the

information matrix in Appendix I. The book draws heavily from published

papers by the author as listed in Appendix J. The author can be reached at

[e-mail] for any comments and/or MATLAB

®

codes needed

while reading the book. MATLAB is a vehicle that is heavily utilized for

graphics and numerical work.

Nanoelectronics have captured the attention and imagination of the world’s

scientists and engineers to replace silicon with carbon-based electronics. It

covers the domain below a characteristic length of 1 micrometer (μm) termi-

nating with about 1 nanometer (nm). A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter,

or three to ve atoms in width. It would take approximately 40,000 nm lined

up in a row to equal the width of a human hair. Below a nm lies the atomic

world with a hydrogen atom as the basis for nomenclature of quantized (dig-

itized) energy levels. Quantum engineering at nm scale is closely related to

nanotechnology, an umbrella term that encompasses all elds of science that

operate on the nanoscale. As is well known, carbon gives biology, and silicon

gave geology and semiconductor technology. However, nano gives differ-

ent structures or allotropes of carbon and other materials appearing for the

application. The transition to carbon is bringing biology into the mainstream

of engineering as a process of synthesis, integrating ideas from several dis-

ciplines. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a few nm in diameter, are rolled-up ver-

sions of graphene sheets that can extend in length to a few μm. That is why

engineering is emerging to be a converging science or it is sometimes labeled