Technology options for developing manufacturable non-silicon nanoelectronics

The future of silicon based microelectronics in general and computing in particular often raises the question of what will come after silicon complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuits. We have examined all of the currently explored options and found that none of these options are suitable as silicon CMOS replacements. We propose a diamond based metal-insulator-field effect transistor (MISFET) on silicon substrate as the answer to the needs of future electronics. A novel processing scheme based on the direct writing of diamond in nano-dimensions (<100 nm) and heterogeneous integration of diamond with silicon substrates is also proposed in this paper.