IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 50, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2003 1821 Foreword Special Issue on Nanoelectronics S INCE THE mid-1960s, when Gordon Moore noted that the number of devices per chip was doubling every 18 months, the electronics industry has enjoyed phenomenal growth. Readers of this journal are familiar with the impact electronic devices have had on so many aspects of life: From scientific instrumentation to supermarket checkout, supercomputers to cellphones, all have benefited from the headlong mad dash into the miniaturization of electronic devices. This has brought unheard-of levels of capability to systems undreamt-of 40 years ago. Engineers, scientists, and consumers alike wait, like children at Christmas, for each new innovation. Every year Santa, in the guise of a high-tech company, has delivered. But important questions are being asked with ever-increasing volume: “How long can this go on?” and, “What comes next?” In this special issue, we will examine both questions, and look for possible answers in the emerging field of nanoelectronics. Moore’s Law predicts an exponential growth in the number of devices per integrated circuit chip. Exponential functions are among the device engineer’s favorite things. They appear everywhere in our work, for example, in the equations that de- scribe the operation of devices and even in equations describing the size of devices as a function of time. With the exponential decrease in device size comes a corresponding increase in the number of devices in a system, and in the capability of the system. Of course, exponential functions of time change very quickly, and the downscaling of devices is no different, already causing tremendous changes, and promising even greater changes in the future. The scaling of MOSFETs has led to lateral dimensions on the nanometer scale. Already, MOSFETs of below 10-nm gate lengths have been demonstrated. At these size scales, previously unimportant physical phenomena such as tunneling and single-electron charging become prominent. In conventional devices such as MOSFETs these must be thor- oughly understood in order to ensure the proper design of both devices and system. The ability to fabricate and manipulate Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TED.2003.816566 objects on the nanoscale creates opportunities in previously inaccessible areas. The very phenomena that cause difficulties in MOSFETs can be exploited to make new classes of devices, and to gain new functionalities in more traditional devices. Molecular electronics and single-electron devices are but two examples of this. The promise of nanoelectronics depends on these new phenomena, and holds the possibility of ex- tremely high device density, high functionality, and low-power dissipation. All are of critical importance for the continued development of electronics. The papers in this special issue discuss both the scaling of CMOS to the nanoscale, as well as devices based on new functionalities involving non-traditional devices exploiting nanoscale phenomena. Two invited papers are also included to give an introduction to issues relating to the ultimate scaling of CMOS. We would like to thank Doug Verret and Jo Ann Marsh of the IEEE for their unceasing help and patience. Without them, this special issue would not have been possible. GREGORY L. SNIDER, Guest Editor University of Notre Dame Center for Nanoscience and Technology Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA snider.7@nd.edu LARS SAMUELSON, Guest Editor Lund University Solid State Physics Lund, Sweden Lars.Samuelson@ftf.lth.se HIROYUKI SAKAKI, Guest Editor University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science Tokyo, Japan sakaki@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp 0018-9383/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE