New Molecular Transistor Can Control Single Electrons

Eloking writes: An international team of scientists has been able to create a microscopic transistor made up of one single molecule and a number of atoms. Gizmag reports: "Researchers from Germany, Japan and the United States have managed to create a tiny, reliable transistor assembled from a single molecule and a dozen additional atoms. The transistor reportedly operates so precisely that it can control the flow of single electrons, paving the way for the next generation of nanomaterials and miniaturized electronics." The team that conducted the research included teams from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Japan.

Comments

Smaller than 1 electron?

[wimconradie]

I wonder if a single electron ever poses a cap on progress in going smaller in technology... Although I must say time (given enough) always tends to eventually break through such limitations.

Re: Smaller than 1 electron?

[Anonymous Coward]

Photonics?

Re:Smaller than 1 electron?

[Muad'Dave]

Weyl Fermions are the next 'big thing' in electronics.

Re:Smaller than 1 electron?

[Antique Geekmeister]

_Energy_ and entropy propose some profound limitations. There have been some very interesting ideas published for quantum computing, which is not necessarily binary, and could another step upwards. The ability to actually trigger a measurable change for recording equipment to read an answer is, itself, a limitation.

Re:Smaller than 1 electron?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

On the other hand, I vaguely recall some people remarking that some of the quantum computing's wilder performance claims may eventually turn out to be a folly, simply because achieving them would break the macroscopic laws of physics.

Re:Smaller than 1 electron?

[towermac]

Interesting.

And yet - "It is the most basic building block of all electrons," ...

Shouldn't the fact that the electron is no longer a fundamental particle and the standard model is apparently wrong be bigger news?

There's that confusion again:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once that number drops to single digits these transistors will become inoperable as quantum mechanics starts getting in the way, with electrons spontaneously jumping from one end of the switch to the other whether the switch is open or closed."

Nah, the electron doesn't jump anywhere, your detection of where it is jumps. The confusion between the detection-of-something and the actual-something, again.

The old 'flock of starlings problem', if you can only detect the flock and not the individual starling, then the flock appears to jump from place to place randomly instantaneously, and sometimes appears in two places at once. But that not the bird that's doing that, its the flock-detector.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the electron doesn't jump anywhere, your detection of where it is jumps.

Um, when you make a perfect position measurement, the wavefunction somehow collapses to a single position eigenvector, so it *is* where you measure it, that's kind of a fundamental property of quantum mechanics that you can't just ignore. The fact that electrons absolutely do not behave like flocks of starlings is also something you can't just ignore. Stop with the naive reinterpretations. If you have a novel interpretation, it has to generate the right maths. Flocks of starlings don't do that. Sorry that QM is hard, but that's not a human failing, it's just how nature works. The human failing is denying this.

If you're finding QM hard, try learning Newtonian mechanics properly first. No statistic of a Newtonian system jumps from value to value without passing through intervening values, and that includes whatever you consider to be the "position" of a flock of birds.

Captcha: cringe

Re:There's that confusion again:

[TapeCutter]

Thanks, that's the way I understand it. I haven't heard the flock of birds analogy before but I have seen large flocks like this one in Australia.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[Anonymous Coward]

" so it *is* where you measure it, "

It is WHAT you measure. If you can only measure *IT* then you detect the IT where you measure it. You see why that is?
So your flock is where you detect the flock to be because that's what you can detect as the flock.

"If you're finding QM hard, try learning Newtonian mechanics properly first. "

Really you QM lot have to go back to the basic 2 slits experiment and ask yourself how ONE single indivisible thing goes through both slits at the same time. Then take a look at the detector, the detector is adding your quantum effect. You could never detect half an electron or photon in each slit because the detector could never detect such a thing.

i.e. you can never see the starling, you see the world through 'flock' sized eyes.

So now all the QM maths becomes maths predicting where the flock will be detected but it is NOT a description of whats going on, its a prediction of what you detector can see.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[GigaplexNZ]

Except the electron actually can tunnel to the other side even when the transistor is turned off. Arguing whether you can or can't observe it passing through the blockade is moot, when all you care about is failing to stop the electron from passing through.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[TapeCutter]

Disclaimer: I don't think an electron is composed of a flock of smaller particles, I visualise it as a kind of "knot" in a force field, sometimes the field lines are "pulled" tight enough to observe the knot. Other times it's like a loose extension cord, you not sure if there's a knot until you start to untangle it.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[TapeCutter]

Watch the clip I posted below. I believe the GP's point is there appears to be; no flock, one flock, multiple flocks, and the flock can appear to 'instantaneously jump' from place to place. IANAQP but I think it's a very neat way to visualise a quantum jump. If you understand the math of QM that's great, math is the language used for the best description we have of nature. The rest of us who barely remember what an eigenvalue is from the math degree we did decades ago have to rely on tenuous analogies and imperfect metaphors when describing it with a 'natural' language, such as english.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[HybridST]

Read this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Even when sent through the slits one at a time the electrons interfere with themselves and the full interferance pattern will emerge over time. The pattern vanishes when using a detector to determine which of the two slits the particle goes through. This is one of the factors that confirms wave-particle duality in the framework of Quantum Mechanics. It's also currently a 1st year physics lab for University students at many institutions.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[Cito]

No, Quark is busy running a bar on DS9, fleecing customers out of gold pressed latinum like a stereotypical Jew.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[Your.Master]

Your experiment tells you it does go through both, your physics model says its indivisible.

The particle model said it was indivisible. The wave model did not. Your flock of starlings is essentially the wave model.

Showing that neither the particle model nor the wave model could, by itself, replicate the double slit experiment, is literally the whole point of the double slit experiment. You're pointing out the particle incompatibility alone.

In your final paragraph, you confuse photon and proton. I assume you meant proton throughout?

(You know, "flock of starlings" "quantum mechanics" brings up slashdot AC comments multiple times on the 1st page of results).

"just look at this math and don't think of the model" isn't an answer.

If your model can produce math that predicts at least as well as the existing math, then you're in business. But otherwise, it is indeed an answer. There's basically no math that's ever done a better job.

Re:There's that confusion again:

[Caesar Tjalbo]

... flock of starlings ...

Is called a "murmuration".

You insensitive clod!!!!

[TapeCutter]

Give people a fucking warning before you post.
That sudden hard-right turn into political lala land almost gave me whiplash.

Re:You insensitive clod!!!!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Didn't you mean whig-lash?

Re:This was on Gizmag yesterday

[dave420]

I know, right?! It's as if they respect the scientific method and humans in general. So fucked up! Next they'll be telling us marching around in blackface shouting "oh lawdy!" is not cool!

Re:The future is going to be incredible...

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Heh. My future had mile-high skyscrapers, colonies on the moon, atomic powered airplanes, fusion power too cheap to meter, and FLYING CARS, goddamit, FLYING FUCKING CARS!

no, not a breakthrough

[markhahn]

manufacturability is what drives the industry, not exotic physics. this project was an interesting demo of tricks you can play with an STM, but it offers nothing towards actual transistors or circuits.

uggh

[shadowrat]

it's taken me a long time to be able to solder smt components. how am i supposed to work with a single molecule!?