Intrinsic unmanufacturability in nanoelectronics

Much of nanoelectronics today does not pass the tests for nanomanufacture - achievement of high yields to a pre-specified performance and tight tolerance - and so will not become a nanotechnology with its implication of engineering control. Seven out of a very wide range of examples are given where the electronic or optical properties of nanostructures exhibit unacceptable variability between adjacent structures after as much as 20 years of research effort in some cases. It is shown that at the linear scale of order 3-5nm, the intrinsic statistical variations associated with adding or removing a small number of atoms to or from a nanostructure by the main fabrication tools of deposition, lithography and etching is the common root cause. The effective integration of such nanostructures into a working addressable array of electronic or optical elements is a further barrier to manufacturability.