Semiconductor research award

Jillian M Buriak of West Lafayette, Ind., will receive the 2003 Award for Pure Chemistry from the American Chemical Society on 25 March for developing ways to attach molecular signals directly to silicon chips, with an eye toward ever smaller electronic devices and perhaps even biological implants.

The current generation of silicon chips can carry features such as etched circuits about 100 nanometers in size, or roughly one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. But in the effort to make computers and other electronic devices ever smaller, lighter and more powerful, the circuits and the chemical tools that make them require increasingly finer control.

"What happens then is the individual molecules on the surface (of the chips) have more and more influence," said Buriak, an inorganic chemist and professor at Purdue University. "For example, the silicon dioxide coating that has worked very well for the last 40 years is actually imperfect on a molecular scale - and as devices get smaller and smaller the electrons that leak may degrade a signal or even cause a short circuit."

Instead of trying to find a better coating, Buriak and her research team are skirting the problem entirely: they are designing methods to attach the molecular features and their interface with the device to the chip itself.