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Researchers Create 4nm Transistor With Seven Atoms

EmagGeek writes "University researchers have created a transistor by replacing just seven atoms of silicon with phosphorous. The seven-atom transistor has hopeful implications for the future of quantum cryptography, nuclear and weather modeling, and other applications. 'The significance of this achievement is that we are not just moving atoms around or looking at them through a microscope,' says Professor Michelle Simmons, a co-author of a paper on the subject that is being published by Nature Nanotechnology. The paper is entitled 'Spectroscopy of Few-Electron Single-Crystal Silicon Quantum Dots'."

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  1. Re:Not Holding My Breath by Thanshin · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So then, just so I'm clear, leg amputation is just as difficult as brain surgery; bricks are just as hard to make as silicon wafers.

    The point is precisely that being harder doesn't stop us from doing things.

    This conversation started with someone pointing the extra difficulties of a new, just proven, process. My point is that those difficulties, that obviously make the problem a hard one, were exactly what was proven resoluble. The news are that those problems were surpassed. We're now on the mechanizing the solution phase.

    The point is that the initially mentioned difficulties are the "already solved" ones. Not that it's an easy process to mechanize, just that the possibility of doing it is precisely what was proven, and that what is now ahead is not actually achieving the feat, which was already done, but making it cheaper and faster.