WFU Physics Colloquium

TITLE: The story of dielectric relaxation: How Intel came to care about Curie's curious discovery

SPEAKER: Dr. John R. Jameson,

TIME: Thursday Dec. 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM

PLACE: Room 101 in Olin Physical Laboratory

More than half a century after the invention of the transistor, never-ending improvement in computers has come to seem as inevitable as death and taxes. However, the scaling of microprocessors is becoming ever more difficult, and continued improvement in computers can no longer be taken for granted. Sometimes, the stringent performance requirements placed on the transistors in microprocessors can make even subtle physical effects seem like monsters. This talk concerns one such monster, dielectric relaxation, which is a transient polarization that builds up perpetually in a dielectric following the application of an electric field. The properties of dielectric relaxation are summarized, a simple theory is presented, and its impact on transistors, DRAM, and other electronic devices is discussed. Amazingly, dielectric relaxation was discovered before the electron. This illustrates how the practical importance of fundamental research is sometimes not known until many years later.