Slashdot Mirror
Aussie, Finnish Researchers Create a Single-Atom Transistor
ACKyushu writes "Researchers from Helsinki University of Technology (Finland), University of New South Wales (Australia), and University of Melbourne (Australia) have succeeded in building a working transistor whose active region comprises only a single phosphorus atom in silicon. The results have just been published in Nano Letters. The working principles of the device are based on sequential tunneling of single electrons between the phosphorus atom and the source and drain leads of the transistor. The tunneling can be suppressed or allowed by controlling the voltage on a nearby metal electrode with a width of a few tens of nanometers."
Doesn't this mean that current limits set on Moore's Law (based on todays known restrictions?) might be pushed a bit further down the road?
Intel already has Atom processors.
but let me guess.
something mass produced based on this in.... 5 to 10 years?
Perhaps I can reach over 9000 Ghz ...
And the mistake begins where a FET(sic) is called a transistor at all.
They have merely got as close as possible to a valve, which is like the single phosphorus FET only with zero charge-transporting atoms between source and drain.
We've had single Atom CPUs for some years now... :)
If the state of a gate depends on one electron, it will be highly sensitive to radiation. So what do we do ? Embed these in large blocks of lead ?
...Wouldn't that be kinda hard to read?
Do people really need to be told where Helsinki, New South Wales, and Melbourne are?
This thingy is just a research device, just good for research. It's not a precursor of anything practical.
It's been known for many, many years that there are serious tradeoffs to be pondered when you shrink transistors (and FETs).
Your basic linear dimension versus surface area versus volume scaling laws are in full play here.
You win at first, as smaller base or gate lengths lead to more speed, and less surface area means less capacitance to charge up.
But below a certain size the rapidly shrinking cross-sectional area reaches its current-carrying capability, while noise and leakage loom large.
Right now the low-level chip designers, with their 10^12 atom transistors are already spending a large part of their time with these issues. The challenges are not going to go away, they just get larger as one attempts to shrink things even more. It's unlikely that these hard challenges can be overcome to span the million-million times distance to a true one-atom transistor.
So don't put any big money on ever having one-atom transistors in any practical device.
Would be designed around a Higgs Boson which would know when to come back from the future and switch with no gate delay...
Apart from the implications this might have for classical electronics, the long-term goal here is to build solid-state quantum computing devices. The phosphorus donor has one lonely electron, and that electron's spin is a good candidate for a qubit. One of the good things about P in Si is the long decoherence times -- T2 times of almost one second have been demonstrated. The phosphorus' nuclear spin of 1/2 stays coherent for hours, if we can find a way to get at it.
Of course, the NIST guys with their ion traps have demonstrated several interacting qubits, but perhaps P in Si chips might be useful as a more stable, more scalable, cheaper or smaller alternative.
Just curious, but how would something like get of the ground? How owuld an australian and finnish university cooperate, and why?
Well, Africa is mostly a warn torn country that is being exploited. Give them peace, and 20-30 years to recover and then we will have them produce high tier technology too.
Africa is not a country, dumbfuck. You must be African.
The active part is a single atom of Phosphorus ? While it might sound like you could get high density circuits with that, I hope they plan on using water cooling, given that phosphorus tends so spontaneously combust.
Because SMDs aren't tedious enough already...
Just one atom in millions. Magic!
"The results have just been published in Nano Letters."
I'm guessing that'd be a Times New Roman 0.0000001 pt font then? Damn, I left my scanning electron reading glasses at home today.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
They built a few a bombs and reactors.
Secunda the 160,000 barrels of oil a day after a coal into a liquid process.
African science is doing fine.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Now the nanotechnical analyses are returning innovation in step with the scale, and the next generation of ULSIC chips is emerging with sparkling clarity. Data density is the key factor in nano/picoscale progress, the Finnish-Australian achievement shows. If the femtoscale horizon can be challenged that will give talented researchers like these the control over the crucial topological features of electrons, energy, and force fields to utilize quantum effects and relativistic factors. Exact mathematical modeling by 3D interactive atomic wavefunction calculations is the infodense method capable of timely research turnaround and advanced single-atom analysis and design work. New components depend on that type of virtual atom model over SEM/AFM optical techniques to generate relevant research data on the picoyoctoscale topology of individual atoms. Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom's RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength. The atom labeled psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by spacetime boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the series expansion differential of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions. Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, each the 3D data image of a type of energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud, accounting for all of them. Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions. Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers are available online at http://www.symmecon.com/ with the complete RQT atomic modeling manual titled The Crystalon Door, copyright TXu1-266-788. TCD conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court of 04/02/2001 titled The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.
Published in nano letters? I don't have an electron microscope, you insensitive clod!