University chemistry professor Jim Hutchison received a patent on Tuesday for his work toward the continuing miniaturization of technology. He developed a way to make transistors, used in electronic devices to amplify signals, out of extremely tiny particles of gold.
“In the future we’ll be able to put millions and millions and billions of these things in the size of a wristwatch and have the power of a desktop computer,” Hutchison said.
Hutchison said every 18 months the size of transistors in consumer electronic devices shrinks by a factor of two, meaning that the number of transistors on each microchip doubles and the performance of the devices that use the transistors also doubles.
“This is why every two years, people want to buy a new computer,” he said.
However, Hutchison said the current method of building smaller transistors is becoming inadequate. A transistor consists of an input end, an output end and a switch in between. As the distance between the input and output ends shrinks, it becomes difficult for the switches to fully halt the flow of electrons when turned off because of a phenomenon called quantum mechanical tunneling. Results of this problem include overheating and increased energy consumption.
Hutchison described this as a top-down approach to transistor making, comparing the process to a sculptor chiseling a block of marble into a statue and discarding a lot of marble.
In contrast, Hutchison builds transistors from the bottom-up, starting with tiny pieces of gold called nanoparticles.
“The nanoparticle has the same dimension relative to a human hair as a human hair does to a football field,” Hutchison said.
In Hutchison model, the gold nanoparticles are attached to a strand of DNA as a structural support and strung between the ends of the transistor. Hutchison said this process actually benefits from quantum mechanical tunneling.
“We took the weakness of traditional electronic devices and made that the strength for our new devices,” Hutchison said.
Hutchison said he developed the idea in collaboration with former University physics professor Martin Wybourne, who has since relocated to Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire.
“It was a chemist and a physicist,” Hutchison said. “It was a good example of an interdisciplinary research project. … Two of us got together in the coffee stand down by the atrium and started talking about science, and this idea came out of that.”
Hutchison began his research in 1996, and when he submitted his first invention disclosure to the University’s Office of Technology Transfer in 1997, he said his work was still in the idea phase. Technology outreach officer Christine Gramer said the purpose of the technology transfer office is to commercialize inventions resulting from University research.
“We patented it when we became convinced that it might be possible to make it,” Hutchison said.
Gramer said Hutchison received a patent last May for developing a new way of synthesizing nanoparticles that is more productive and uses more environmentally benign materials than previous methods. His current patent is specifically for the electronic devices involved in his research, and Gramer said he has several other patents pending.
“The patent office only lets you have one patent per invention even if they’re all related to each other,” Gramer said.
It is currently uncertain when and how Hutchison innovations will appear in consumer electronic devices.
“We’re investigating test structures in an academic research lab, and there’s a big step from that to getting it into your wristwatch, your computer,” Hutchison said.
However, development may be in the works.
“We’re in the early stages of discussion with a potential licensee for this technology,” said Brian Smith, senior technology development associate in the Office of Technology Transfer.
When the University licenses technology invented on campus to companies that sell products or services based on the technology, profits are divided between the inventor, the inventor’s department or laboratory, and the University. Smith said the University’s share of profits earned through licensing of inventions like Hutchison is invested into new research, leading to an “innovation cycle.”

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