The Future is Bright and Electric
October 16, 2007 - Aaron Baca
It is unseasonably cold for early August. A morning soaker has just let up, and the sun is poking through low clouds dragging across Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
It's 2032 and travelers no longer stand in lines. Much to your relief, airline travel has become a drop-your-bags-and-go routine. You passed silently through security and were cleared for boarding when you stepped through the airport's doors moments earlier. A miniature computer woven into your hat has already updated your boarding documents and is now gathering weather and restaurant information about your destination.
Actually, computers are everywhere. They are embedded in almost everything: clothes, flooring, eyeglasses and even, sometimes, in our own bodies. They constantly monitor our safety, health and comfort.
Science fiction?
Sure, for now it is. But not if Georgia State University physicist Nikolaus Dietz has his way.
"I'm looking for ways to make that bridge [to tomorrow’s hightech gadgetry]," says Dietz. He goes on to explain how the siliconbased computers and electronics of today might become museum relics thanks to ongoing development of newer materials in labs like his.
It's not too far-fetched, Dietz says, to think of devices such as thin-film computers and solar panels woven into our clothes or even miniscule medical sensors coursing through our blood.
Security gates like those at the airport, Dietz says, might become so finely tuned they can detect an offending shard of metal or sniff for tell-tale chemical signs of bombs in mere milliseconds.
"Technology always changes. That is constant. Because we have pushed silicon-dioxide to its limits means we will find change in new areas. When that happens, entire worlds will open up to us," Dietz says.
Dietz is betting he can force his will onto reluctant molecules of various compounds in a quest to improve the way electrons manage the microscopic on-ramps and freeways of semiconductors, integrated circuits and computer chips.
He wants to perfect a newer semiconductor that can traffic both light and electronic signals. He works primarily with indium and nitride compounds, which many scientists believe have great promise as advanced semiconductors.
"Our new world begins when we begin making components that combine light and electric signals. That's the day we're looking for," Dietz says.
Devices that can combine light and electronic signals, or optoelectronics, are expected to bring unheard-of conveniences: televisions molded into walls, thin-film lights that generate natural outside light and draw hardly any power, and computers that use quantum mechanics instead of simple binary logic.
"It's a promising area," says Georgia State computer science chair Yi Pan. "Alternative materials development could be very important to our next generation of computing."
Although materials researchers think their new semiconductors are nearly a sure thing, the materials from which they will be made still face an uphill battle because the temperatures and pressures needed to make them are so volatile that some materials cannot be directly combined or they will destroy each other.
Toward that end, Dietz is working under a four-year grant from the U.S. Air Force perfecting a reactor that can delicately combine the newer indium nitride-based semiconductors molecule-by-molecule through a process known as high pressure chemical vapor deposition.
Dietz was originally funded by NASA, which was interested in developing the technology for orbiting space stations. But when funding for those efforts dried up, the Air Force stepped in with different plans to develop new security applications. The Air Force grant provides $150,000 annually.
In addition to his reactor, Dietz has achieved another breakthrough by devising a way to monitor this molecule-building process using laser-based sensors that do not disturb the growth process inside the reactor.
Dietz explains, "If we make an error [during the growth stage], the whole process is ruined. With real-time monitoring we can understand the kinetics, we can understand the conditions, and that's how we'll achieve stability."
The first "real" indium nitride devices will likely be relatively simple semiconductors that emit light and high-frequency radio signals. The ability to generate these signals, however, represents a huge gain in electronics engineering because the signals can be tuned to specific needs, which is highly desired in biomedical and security sensor technology.
"This is why the Air Force is interested in technology like this," Dietz says. "Picture a day when you walk through a door and there is no metal detector, just a quick scan that tells instantly if you are carrying dangerous items."
Scientists believe computer manufacturers and data network builders will someday want to combine light and electrical pulses to build faster and smaller computers that will look radically different than today's Dell or Apple.
Computer experts already envision a time when so-called quantum computers will measure the spin of electrons rather than just their presence to generate more computational power and data storage.
"If they can build a computer that goes beyond traditional on-off binary logic, well then that becomes a very interesting world where almost anything's possible," says Pan.