Michelle Simmons is the Director of the Atomic Fabrication Facility and a Federation Fellow at the University of New South Wales. She completed a double degree in Physics and Chemistry at Durham University, UK, and conducted her PhD research in the study of high efficiency solar cells. She then worked for six years in quantum electronics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge before coming to Australia in 1999 as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow and a Program Manager in the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology. She has published over 250 papers, and given over 30 invited talks at conference in the past five years. She was a member of the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training’s National Research Priorities Committee and the Australian Research Council Expert Advisory Committee for Physics, Chemistry and Geoscience for four years, serving as Chair in 2005. In 2005 she was awarded the Pawsey Medal by the Academy. Her research interests are to develop the technology to build electronic devices at the atomic-scale, and understand their quantum properties.

How to observe quantum hehaviour in semiconductor devices
by Professor Michelle Simmons

Over the past three decades the driving force behind the expansion of the microelectronics industry has been the ability to pack ever more features onto a silicon chip, achieved by continually miniaturising the size of the individual components. However, as devices get smaller and smaller two problems emerge. The first is that quantum physics is starting to affect device behaviour. The second is that after 2015 there is no known technological route to reduce device sizes below 10nm. This talk will discuss a versatile fabrication strategy that we have developed towards atomicscale (0.1nm) device fabrication in silicon using a combination of scanning tunnelling microscopy and atomic precision crystal growth.

How atoms in semiconductors can be manipulated to make atomic-scale devices will be demonstrated. More importantly it will be shown how this new technology can be used to observe the onset of quantum phenomenon in electronic devices as they become very small. The significance of these results for future device development and an insight into how quantum effects may be harnessed to develop new computers will be discussed.

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