Scientists have created what they claim is the world’s smallest transistor, using a single phosphorus atom.
An international team at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne, has described the smallest transistor ever built in the Nature Nanotechnology journal.
Michelle Simmons, who led the team, says the development is less about improving current technology than building future technology.
“This is a beautiful demonstration of controlling matter at the atomic scale to make a real device. Fifty years ago when the first transistor was developed, no one could have predicted the role computers would play in our society today.
“As we transition to atomic-scale devices, we are now entering a new paradigm where quantum mechanics promises a similar technological disruption. It is the promise of this future technology that makes this present development so exciting,” Simmons said.
A single phosphorus atom is just 0.1 nanometres across, which would significantly reduce the size of processors made using this technique, although it may be many years before single-atom processors actually are manufactured.
However, the single-atom transistor does have one serious limitation — it must be kept very cold, at least as cold as liquid nitrogen, or minus 196 Celsius.
“The atom sits in a well or channel and for it to operate as a transistor the electrons must stay in that channel. At higher temperatures, the electrons move more and go outside of the channel. For this atom to act like a metal you have to contain the electrons to the channel.
“If someone develops a technique to contain the electrons, this technique could be used to build a computer that would work at room temperature. But this is a fundamental question for this technology,” Gerhard Klimeck, a team member, said in a release by Purdue University.
Keywords: nanotechnology, transistor, atomic device
That's a fabulous discovery. Why can't we use that phosphorous transistor to built digital systems that are kept in cold container which maintain itself cold such that making that container isolated from our atmospheric temperature assuring that there won't be any temp changes in cold container
It's really a step ahead of today's technology. Single atom
transistor. the processor area will decrease exponentially, leading to
reduction a huge amount of area. Congrats to the team developed it. But
two major problems would be maintaining the temperature as there will be
increase in temperature due to electric current, and the second one will
be that manufacturing precision with this kind of technology must be
very high as it reduces the probability of maintenance and repair
ability to zero. Hope to work in this domain in near future.
Science and Technology is everlasting field and continue to grow
through nanotechnology, it is evident that day by day space & time
is likely to accomodate every new reserch.It has got no other
alternative than to accepct every field,available to human.
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