Nanoelectronics for an ubiquitous information society

Nanoelectronics will open up both new opportunities and new challenges. Already, it has been successfully used in mass production of gigabit memories, including flash and DRAM, and in field-emission displays (FED) with carbon nanotubes. The technical challenge is to deal with process and device parameter variation, while the economic challenge is to reduce the high cost of fabrication. One way to overcome these technical and economic uncertainties is to organize a tight collaboration of the device industry with system and service industries, to distribute the risk, and to maximize the total social benefit. The "IT 839 Strategy" of the Korean government is an example of such a program to enhance cooperation amongst service, system, and device industries, to speed up the use of nanoelectronics for the realization of a ubiquitous information society. In such a society, information technology (IT) enables everyone to enjoy daily life without being aware of IT itself. This is made possible by the "invisible silicon" that resides within almost everything in our society, to sense, analyze, and control us and our environment. Nanoelectronics allows the mass production of such new silicon. RFID chips and sensor networks are examples of "invisible silicon", which can integrate nano-electromechanical systems and RF technology, as well as low-power and multimedia SoCs. These technologies will facilitate future IT, and change our world, just as fourth-generation mobile-phone developments are leading us to the ubiquitous information society.