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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."
The devil is in the details. The "Active" region is only 1 atom wide, but the gate is still "10s of nanometers" Last I checked, the gate was still part of a transistor. We're currently mass producing with critical dimensions at 34 nanometers where I work. Granted, this is sweet, knowing that a transistor's active region can be that small. Still, the limit will really be placed on reproducibility. I mean, placing a single phos atom in the middle of a silicon chip at just the right location? That kind of technology being moved into the semiconductor industry for mass reproduction and economies of scale is still a long ways out and I personally think Moore's law will lose steam before then.