CRYSTAL GROWTH & DESIGN 2001 VOL. 1, NO. 3 179-181
Perspective Designing Carbon Crystals for Nanotechnology Applications Yury Gogotsi* Drexel University, Department of Materials Engineering, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 Received January 5, 2001
Growing large and perfect single crystals has been the main objective for the crystal growth community for years. Availability of large synthetic quartz and silicon crystals changed the electronic and telecommunication industry and affected our lives, leading to new devices and technologies. An increase in the size of silicon crystals led to a larger wafer diameter (12 in. nowadays) and to an increased number of devices per wafer, which resulted in a decrease in the cost of semiconductor chips. It is also obvious why a large diamond is better than a small one. However, the situation may change soon. The global interest in nanotechnology is the reason the interest of scientists and engineers may turn to small “nano-” and “micro-” crystals. Indeed, the science of crystal growth may experience a new surge during the first decade of the new century. Objects on the scale of 1-100 nm cannot be machined using any mechanical tools. Thus, the mechanical engineering approach fails already at micrometer scales. Semiconductor technology developed tools to create micrometer-sized two-dimensional and simple three-dimensional structures, but even electron beam lithography cannot create objects that are 10-100 nm in size with subnanometer accuracy. They cannot be etched or deposited using the existing microfabrication techniques. The best, and probably only, way to create three-dimensional nanostructures is growing them atom by atom using crystal growth techniques. Moreover, it is easier to grow a perfect crystal with the size of
