MSE Colloquium: Gerhard Klimeck, A Single Atom Transistor and Global Impact on Research and Education through nanoHUB.org

Abstract

The end of Moore’s law has been falsely predicted repeatedly over 20 years until 2016, while Silicon technology has been driven to seemingly unlimited miniaturization. One foundational limit of size downscaling, however, will be hard to overcome – the discreteness of the underlying atomic system. Let’s assume cost and manufacturability issues can be overcome: Can one reach such atomic limits? Can one make wires that are say 4 atoms wide and 1 atom tall and still provide Ohmic conductivity? What modeling approaches are needed? How can such modeling software be disseminated widely? This presentation will address these questions through experimental and theoretical results of our recently demonstrated “Single Atom Transistor” [1,2] and overview nanoHUB.org.  nanoHUB is serving over 1.4 million visitors annually with a library of 6,000 content items.  Over 600 simulation tools are freely available for anyone and are now listed as a new type of publication in the Web of Science.
[1] Fuechsle et al, "A single-atom transistor" Nature Nanotechnology 7, 242–246 (2012)
[2] Weber et al, ""Ohm's Law Survives to the Atomic Scale", Science 335, 64 (2012)

Bio

Gerhard Klimeck is the Reilly Director of the Center for Predictive Materials and Devices (c-PRIMED) and the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He guides the technical developments and strategies of nanoHUB.org which annually serves over 1.4 million visitors worldwide with on-line simulation, tutorials, and seminars. He was previously with NASA/JPL and Texas Instruments leading the Nanoelectronic Modeling Tool development (NEMO). His work is documented in over 500 peer-reviewed journal and proceedings articles resulting in over 15,000 citations and a citation h-index of 64 in Google Scholar and 53 in the Web-of-Science.  In 2019 he won a German Humboldt Research Prize.  He is a fellow of the IEEE, American Physical Society, and the Institute of Physics.