The transistor came out of our understanding of semiconductors and the properties of silicon, the properties of copper or aluminum on silicon, the propagation of voids-all those materials issues are constantly the barrier to the next generation, said Sethna. Indeed, much of the resources and talent going into current materials research is driven by the needs of the electronics industry five years in the future. And materials science has been accelerated, in turn, by the use of computers. Sethna expects the new, accessible approach to supercomputer use to provide a fundamental breakthrough in researchers' ability to model materials systems. The new thrust in materials modeling is to build multiscale simulations.
Researchers have simulations.
Researchers have pared down the complexity of materials simulations by focusing on a specific length scale. For example, the behavior of defects in a crystal can be modeled on a length scale of hundreds of atoms. The behavior of the atoms, in turn, depends on their interaction with electrons in the material. A truly realistic simulation would start by modeling the motion of thousands or millions of electrons to deduce their influence on a cluster of hundreds of atoms. From there it would be possible to predict the behavior of a defect.