Scientists just developed the world’s smallest transistor
Scientists have succeeded in creating the world’s smallest transistor, producing a switch with a working 1-nanometre gate. If you want to know how incredibly tiny that is, a human hair is around 80,000 to 100,000 nanometres wide.
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> Scientists have succeeded in creating the world’s smallest transistor, producing a switch with a working 1-nanometre gate.
OMG. That’s incredible. I can remember back in the 1980s an article in Scientific American that explained that we’d never be able to make transistor gates significantly smaller than was possible at that time, roughly 1000 nanometres across. By the year 2010 we were down to 32 nanometres across. Massive improvements even since then. In 2015 we were supposed to hit 10 nanometres across with predicted improvements even beyond that, down to 5 nm in 2019.
The diameter of an atom ranges from about 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers. So a 1 nm gate is only two to ten atoms wide. How the heck do you dope a semiconductor on such an incredibly tiny scale? You don’t. It can’t be done. A carbon nanotube takes the place of doping. But even then, “5-nanometre transistors were previously considered to be the theoretical limit because once you go smaller than that with silicon, a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling occurs, where electrons start leaping from one transistor to another, making signals go haywire. This means we can’t turn off the transistors”.
“But with molybdenum disulphide in place of silicon, effectively putting the brakes on electrons, the signals can once more be controlled. In testing, the researchers’ prototype device – which combines MoS2 with a 1-nanometre-wide carbon nanotube – showed that the transistor effectively controlled the flow of electrons.”
Amazing.
I wonder if its actual possible to make chips using 1nm transistors and if so would heat dissipation become extremely hard,
Cymek said:
I wonder if its actual possible to make chips using 1nm transistors and if so would heat dissipation become extremely hard,
If there is less material for the heat to move through it may be easier for heat dissipation?
Cymek said:
I wonder if its actual possible to make chips using 1nm transistors and if so would heat dissipation become extremely hard,
Very probably – we’re within an OoM already, and yes.
Cymek said:
I wonder if its actual possible to make chips using 1nm transistors and if so would heat dissipation become extremely hard,
I wonder that too. I initially thought no. But now carbon nanotubes are churned out in large numbers it may be possible. The deposition of molybdenum disulphide on top of that wouldn’t be too difficult. And separating the transistors from one another not too difficult, too. But the cost?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nanometer