Nanotechnology is a platform supporting a wide range of technology areas, such as electronics, mechanics , chemistry, life science, etc. Nanotechnology will inevitably lead to the creation of innovative products in the 21st century. NEC is entering this arena through semiconductor miniaturization technology.

NEC is developing nanodevices from three standpoints. One is to bring breakthrough to present semiconductor devices. In the production level, 100nm semiconductor technology will become ready soon to be launched. In order to reduce the device size further, we will encounter various technological issues in design and fabrication. Sooner or later, we will reach a miniaturization limit of Si MOSFETs. In such small structures, various quantum effects become noticeable, and we expect some new devices to emerge by utilizing such quantum effects, realizing ultra-high density memories and smart functional logic circuits. The most radical one would be a quantum bit device that would enable quantum computing, which would revolutionizes the world of computing.

The second one is carbon nanotube devices. Due to their unique atomic structures, carbon nanotubes provide many interesting electrical, chemical and mechanical characteristics. After accumulation of much fundamental work on carbon nanotubes, we can now discuss the various device applications using carbon nanotubes. In a seminar, the research activities on fuel cells with carbon nanotube electrodes for mobile-electronics applications will be shown.

The third one is interdisciplinary nanodevices. We would like to apply nanofabrication technologies, which had been developed with the aim of semiconductor device miniaturization, to some interdisciplinary area. NEMS (Nano-scaled ElectroMechanical Systems) devices and nanobio devices are their examples.

In the seminar, current development status of nanotechnology in NEC will be addressed, in particular, focusing on the carbon nanotube technology.