The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics

by Kakalios, James

  What’s the point of the second metal layer? If the two electrodes that used to pass the current through the semiconductor are shorted, and a large voltage is applied to the gate metal, then electrical charges can quantum mechanically tunnel to this interior electrode. This electrode is not connected to any outside wires and is termed the “floating gate.” The floating gate can be a thin metal film, or it could be a layer of silicon nanocrystals, separated from one another so that these charges remain on the silicon particles and do not leak away. The charged floating gate generates an electric field in the semiconductor, influencing the current-carrying channel and maintaining the device in either a high- or low-conductance state (that is, recorded as a “one” or a “zero”) even after the voltage is removed from the gate metal. Until a voltage of opposite polarity is applied, the transistor will store this state of the transistor, even when the transistor is unplugged from any power supply (such a memory is termed “nonvolatile”). The story goes that a colleague of Fujio Masuoka, the inventor of this type of transistor memory, when describing how quickly the stored information could be erased, said that it reminded him of a camera’s flash, whence the nickname for the device derives. At the time of this writing, flash memory devices capable of storing 256 gigabytes of information (large enough to store more than ten thousand copies of this book as Word documents) are being manufactured.

  Nonvolatile memories have also revolutionized photography. In conventional, nondigital cameras, a light photon induces a chemical change in a photographic film. The information as to where the photon was absorbed by the molecule in the film is stored, and then a series of wet chemistry steps transfers this information to a photographic print. The graininess of individual molecules in a conventional film is now replaced with a pixilated grid. When photons strike the photodetectors in a given pixel, they will, if absorbed, create mobile charges. Using different semiconductors, the energy separation between the filled and empty bands of states can be changed, enabling photodetectors that can image in the infrared, visible, or ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. The charges up in the balcony can be converted to voltages, and then stored on flash memories. The location of each pixel is known, so a digital record of the number of photons that struck the array of photodetectors is obtained.

  Once an image is digitally captured, the ability to display it on a flat panel screen, as opposed to the bulky cathode ray tubes that were a feature of televisions up until fairly recently, also makes use of semiconductor transistor technology. The bits of information in this case are the pixels on the display screen. In each pixel is a small amount of a “liquid crystal,” consisting of long chain organic molecules (that is, carbon atoms bonded in a line, with various other elements and chemical groups protruding from the carbon chain). Geometric constraints and electrostatic charges along the carbon line will lead certain long chain molecules to pack together in different arrangements, from a loose, random collection to a herringbone pattern not unlike a professor’s tweed coat to a more ordered phase similar to matches tightly stacked in a box. Just as the matches can be easily poured out of the matchbox regardless of their packing, these long chain molecules retain the ability to fill a container and flow as a fluid.

  Certain liquid crystal molecules will make a transition from one ordered configuration to another when the temperature is changed—or if an external electric field is applied to the molecules. The optical properties of water change dramatically when ice undergoes a phase transition and melts—similarly, when certain liquid crystals change from one packing state to another under an external voltage, there can be an associated change in their optical properties, such as whether the material reflects light and is shiny or absorbs light and appears dark. Early “liquid crystal watches” had metal electrodes in “broken eight” pattern, and depending on which metal plate had an applied voltage, different regions of the liquid crystal would appear dark, and thus form different numerals depending on the time of day. These liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are still employed in certain clocks and timers. For more sophisticated image displays, a capacitor and a thin film transistor (sometimes referred to as a TFT) are placed behind each liquid crystal pixel. Color filters can convert a grayscale image to a color one, and by changing the timing of when each pixel is turned on and off, one can view a moving image, similar to the television screen shown on the cover of the December 1936 Amazing Stories science fiction pulp (seen in Figure 45).

  The ability to instantly display the stored image (or video) and the convenience of data transfer and large storage capacity, coupled with the incorporation of these cameras into other devices (such as cell phones or computer screens), has exceeded the expectations of science fiction pulp magazines—well, with one exception. As illustrated in Figure 46, the notion that a device capable of wireless video reception and broadcasting small enough that it would fit on a person’s wrist was indeed anticipated in 1964 by the comic strip creator Chester Gould. Wrist phones that are capable of video transmission are now becoming available, another example of fiction becoming reality through quantum mechanics. Now, if we could only figure out how to construct personal “garbage cans” (Chapter 4, Figure 8) that fly by means of magnetism!

  Figure 45: While the Space Marines appear to be viewing a flat panel display on this cover, the story by Bob Olson indicates that they are in fact watching a 3-D picture tube image.

  Figure 46: Dick Tracy using a two-way wrist phone with video capabilities, This gadget was introduced in 1964, a good forty years before real technology would catch up with the comic strips.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Spintronics

  Everything—light and matter—has an

  “intrinsic angular momentum,” or “spin,”

  that can have only discrete values

  One of the most surprising discoveries made by physicists probing the inner workings of the atom was that electrons—subatomic particles that are the basic carriers of negative charge—also are little bar magnets, like those shown in Figure 10 in chapter 4. This intrinsic magnetic field is associated with a property called “spin,” though this term is a misnomer—while it does relate to intrinsic angular momentum, the magnetic field associated with the electron doesn’t really come from its spinning like a top. Nevertheless, when physicists refer to the internal magnetic field possessed by electrons (or protons or neutrons), they inevitably speak of the particle’s spin.

  A transistor modulates the current flowing through a semiconductor by the application of an electric field to an insulating slab on top of the conducting material. In this way the current flowing through the semiconductor is regulated through the electron’s negative charge. The magnetic field that the electron exhibits has been, in most electronics up till now, completely ignored. As one might imagine, this situation changes in devices characterized as “spintronic,” a shorthand expression for “spin transport electronics.” Here the electron’s magnetic field is a crucial component of the signal being detected or manipulated. One form of spintronics has been employed in computer hard drives, while the next generation of such devices (discussed in Section 6) may make hard drives unnecessary.

  As described in Chapter 15, a DVD encodes information in the form of ones and zeros as smooth or pitted regions on a shiny disc. A laser reflected from the surface of the disc does so either specularly, that is, smoothly onto a photodetector if the surface is smooth, or diffusely, away from the detector if it strikes a jagged pit. Similarly, the hard disc drive in a computer is a magnetic material with regions magnetized in particular patterns; the smallest elements of the pattern are termed “bits.” The drive stores information in the form of ones and zeros as magnetized regions, with north poles pointing in one orientation representing a “one,” and in the other direction standing for a “zero.” Each bit (in current disc drives) is written by moving a magnet over the region, which orients the magnetic pattern. To create the opposite pattern, a magnetic field in the reverse direction is applied. To
erase the bit, a depolarizing magnetic field is applied. To read the “one” or “zero” stored on the disc, hard drives employ sensors such as “giant magnetoresistance” devices or “magnetic tunnel junctions.”

  All solids have bands of allowed states in which the electrons may reside, separated by energy gaps where there are no allowed quantum states. The difference between an insulator and a metal is that for an insulator (or a semiconductor), the last filled band, the orchestra in our auditorium analogy, is completely filled, with every possible energy state being occupied by an electron. In contrast, in metals, the lower orchestra level is only half filled, as shown in Figure 34b in Chapter 14. If a voltage is applied to a metal, the electrons feel a force. This force in turn accelerates the electrons, causing them to speed up and increase their kinetic energy. Recall the water-hose analogy of metal wires—the voltage is like the water pressure, and the electrical current is the resulting flow of water through the hose. As there are always some unoccupied seats in the lower orchestra level of a metal, electrons in the upper, filled rows can always move to higher energy states, and the material is able to conduct an electrical current.

  What determines the current observed in a metal for a given applied voltage? Normally the electrons can surf using the atoms in the metal wire—as long as the atoms are in a uniform crystalline arrangement, they do not impede the electrical current. One can run on a city sidewalk and never step on a crack (thereby preserving one’s mother’s back) as long as the placement of the concrete segments is uniform and matched to one’s stride. If there is a hole in the sidewalk, or a protruding tree root, or a shortened segment, then it is likely that the runner will stumble. In any real metal wire there will be defects such as crystalline imperfections (atoms randomly located out of their preferred ordered positions) and impurities that inevitably sneak into the solid during the fabrication process. Electrons accelerated by a voltage will scatter from these defects and transfer some of their kinetic energy to these atoms.

  Sometimes this scattering is a good thing, as in an incandescent lightbulb or a toaster. There a large current is forced through a narrow filament, and the accelerated electrons transfer so much of their energy to the atoms in the wire that they shake violently about their normal crystalline positions. This shaking heats the wire until it is glowing red-hot (as in the coils in your toaster), and for higher currents in thinner wires, the shaking can cause excitation of electrons to all higher energy states equally, with resultant emission of light of all frequencies, perceived as white light (as in the filament of a lightbulb). Sometimes the loss of energy through collisions with atoms in the metallic wire is a bad thing, as in electrical power transmission cables; in order to compensate for these energy losses, the voltages along the lines must be very high, requiring power substations and transformers along the line.

  Computer hard-drive disc readers employ the scattering of an electrical current by magnetic atoms to sense the different fields of the magnetized bits. A thin, nonmagnetic metal is sandwiched between two magnetic metals. In the absence of an external magnetic field, one slice of magnetic “bread” is permanently polarized so that its magnetic field points in one direction within the layer, while the other slice of bread is polarized in another direction (the nature of the quantum mechanical coupling between the magnetic layers, separated by the nonmagnetic middle layer, leads to this configuration being the low-energy state).

  Imagine a flow of electrons perpendicular through the top of this “sandwich,” passing through the face of one slice of magnetic bread, through the nonmagnetic metal meat of the sandwich, and finally through the face of the other magnetic metal bread slice, as shown in Figure 47. When first entering the first magnetized layer, the electrons are unpolarized—their internal magnetic fields are as likely to point in one direction (spin “up”) as the other (spin “down”). The first ferromagnetic layer polarizes the electrons, and those that move into the nonmagnetic spacer layer will have their internal magnetic fields pointing in the same direction as the field in the first metal layer. When they reach the second magnetized layer, which normally has a field pointing in the opposite direction, these polarized electrons are mostly reflected, so very little electrical current passes through the second layer and leaves the sandwich. If very little current results for a given voltage, we say that the device has a high resistance for an electrical current passing perpendicular through the three layers.

  Now this structure is placed in an external magnetic field, such as that created by a magnetized bit on a computer hard drive. The external field forces both magnetic layers in this sandwich (Figure 47b) to point in the same direction. When an electrical current now passes through this structure, the first layer polarizes the electron’s magnetic fields as before, and the second layer, now pointing in the same direction, readily allows the electrons to pass through, and hence a large current flows through the three-layer device. This change in resistance with an external magnetic field can be very large, up to 80 percent or more (they are, seriously, technically known as giant magnetoresistance devices), which means that they are very sensitive to even small magnetic fields. One can thus make the magnetically polarized bits on the hard drive smaller and still be able to reliably read out the sequence of “ones” and “zeros.” Smaller bits means more of them can be packed on a given disc area, and the storage capabilities of computer hard drives have increased dramatically since the introduction of this first spintronic device.

  Figure 47: Sketch of the device structure used to measure magnetic fields with an electrical current in a computer hard drive. An electrical current has both a negative charge and a built-in magnetic field resulting from its quantum mechanical intrinsic angular momentum (“spin”). Electrons flowing into the device are magnetically polarized by the first layer. In (a), the second layer is aligned opposite to the first, so the electrons polarized by the first layer are repelled by the second, and a very small current results. In the second case (b), the second magnetic layer is aligned in the same direction as the first, and the polarized electrons easily pass through the second layer. This configuration would present a low resistance to the flow of current, while the first case (a) would represent a high resistance state.

  The first generation of iPods was able to store large data files on a small magnetic disc because the sensors used to read the information made use of the giant magnetoresistance effect. The drive to pack smaller magnetic bits at higher densities has led to the development of magnetic sensors on hard drives that employ another quantum mechanical phenomenon—tunneling—to sense the magnetic fields of the bits. These sensors have essentially the same structure as the device in Figure 47. Instead of a nonmagnetic metal placed between the two magnetic slices of bread, a thin insulator is used. A current can pass through the device only via tunneling, and the probability of this process turns out to be very sensitive to the magnetic polarization on either side of the barrier. These devices provide an even more sensitive probe of very small magnetic fields and are found in computer hard drives currently available for purchase. Every time we access information on our computers, we are making use of the practical applications of quantum mechanical tunneling.

  The basic principles underlying giant magnetoresistance are finding new applications in future spintronic devices. Giant magnetoresistance was discovered in 1988 by Albert Fert in France and independently by Peter Grünberg in Germany, for which they shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007. By 1997, hard drives containing read heads using the giant magnetoresistance effect were available for sale. It is actually not unusual for quantum-mechanics-enabled devices to quickly find their way into consumer products. Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the transistor in 1948, and by 1954 one could purchase the first (expensive) transistor radio.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Window on Inner Space

  In the 1963 Roger Corman science fiction film X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes, Dr. James Xavier, searching f
or improvements in patient care, develops a serum in the form of eye drops that enables a person to see through solid matter. Eschewing animal testing as not being suitably reliable, he experiments on himself and does indeed gain the ability to see through a person’s clothing and epidermis. However, this success leads to one of the greatest catastrophes that can befall any scientist—he loses his research grant when his funding agency discounts his claims of “X-ray vision!” Nevertheless, his ability to see within the interior of a person enables him to save a small child’s life, as he recognizes that she was about to receive an unnecessary and ineffective operation. Sadly for Dr. Xavier, his X-ray vision becomes stronger and stronger, until his eyelids and thick dark glasses provide no respite. It does not end well for the well-meaning doctor, as the biblical expression “If thine eye offend thee ...” plays a key role in the film’s conclusion.

  Fortunately we can safely peer inside a person, see his or her internal organs, and discriminate healthy tissue from cancerous growths, without the disastrous consequences suffered by Dr. Xavier. I now address a device that has become common in most hospitals and many medical clinics and would certainly have strained the credulity of the editors of any science fiction pulp magazine had it been featured in a submitted story—magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. This process, enabling detailed high-resolution imaging of the interior of a person, is a striking illustration of how our understanding of the quantum nature of matter, driven by scientists’ curiosity in the 1920s and 1930s about the rules governing the behavior of atoms and light, has led to the development of technologies that futurists could not suspect fifty years ago.