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Junctionless Transistor Could Simplify Chip Making
An anonymous reader writes "A novel transistor architecture has been developed by a team of researchers led by Jean-Pierre Colinge at Tyndall National Institute at Cork, Ireland. Not many technology developments can be truly described as 'a breakthrough' or "revolutionary' but this might just fit the bill. It does depend on the extremely small dimensions of silicon nanowires just a few dozens of atoms wide. EE Times picked up on an announcement of a paper on the topic being published by Nature Nanotechnology."
Something to get excited about in the field of basic electronic components. Virtually ideal transistors that are easy to fabricate will revolutionize the nanoprocessor industry. I can see cell phones with the computing power of todays desktops in the next 5-10 years from this.
Ignorance is Bliss -- And the Opposite is True -- Genius is Madness
Evidence of doping?
Proof Read Much?
Proofread much?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What? Nature exists on the nano-level as well... just in a less 'huggable' format.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Old news. This kind of thing has been thrown around a lot, for several years.
But some university made a single transistor, and now suddenly the revolution is forthcoming. Last week it was graphene transistors, the week before that, 100GHz transistors on diamond.
This is the direction that things are probably going to move - different geometries, wrap-around gates to improve gate control - and there's going to be a lot of materials science and new (to CMOS) materials needed. But we're not there yet, we're quite a ways out... and in many ways, this isn't even the limiting factor in microprocessors - it's wire delay, parasitic capacitances. That's why so many groups and corporations are focusing on silicon and polysilicon waveguides - using light as an interconnect, nearly lossless, instant, no parasitic coupling (ideally).
I don't want to downplay what they did *too* much... but universities piss me off when they just become a PR machine. It's just plain irresponsible; it's a pissing match, and if just half of the things they claimed were true, that how things are right now would seem like the dark ages.
The article is very slim on details and dead wrong on some important facts.
The lack of a junction is not unique, ever heard of a MOSFET, "There is no pn junction, so there is no depletion region."
And I'm curious how they induce conductivity in silicon without dopants, considering that silicon is a semiconductor and a "semiconductor is a material that has an electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator", therefore "conductivity may easily be modified by introducing impurities into their crystal lattice" via doping.
And the article includes one other statement that is questionable in my opinion...
Gate leakage is an issue but the true bane of transistor power consumption is Rdson (resistance drain to source when transistor is on). The reason for the massive heat sinks and fans on processors today is not due to gate leakage its due to the resistance of the transistor channels and the various interconnects.
Current flowing through the resistive channel and internconnects in the millions of transistors in a processor generates heat for the same reason that a basic carbon based resistor connected to a voltage source will heat up. And increasing the doping level in the gates and poly silicon interconnects reduces resistance, with no doping it seems the problem of power loss through heat generation will only be worse.
The article is somewhat interesting and perhaps it is just a bad article lacking significant detail.
The writer for EE Times seems to have been confused. The story describes a field-effect transistor. They never had junctions.
What is described is a novel method of making a field-effect transistor.
See the Nature abstract: Nanowire transistors without junctions. Quote: "These devices have full CMOS functionality." I don't understand why they are talking about "doping gradients" when they are making FETs.
Wow! Nature.com charges $32 to see the full article!!
Yes, "FETs have a doped source and drain." But my understanding is that there is the doping gradient is far less than that in transistors, and obviously it is done for a different purpose. The doping merely provides the conductivity in the FET body between the source and drain. In an FET, the gradient provides greater efficiency by reducing the resistance around the source and drain contacts.
In a junction transistor, the gradient is abrupt and necessary to the operation of the transistor.