Researchers have built a transistor with a 'gate' just one nanometre long — one-fifth of the smallest length thought to be possible in silicon transistors.
The semiconductor industry is reaching the limits of its capacity to shrink silicon-based transistors. Graphene and other '2D' materials are promising replacements for silicon because they are one atom thick and have good electronic properties. Ali Javey at the University of California, Berkeley, and his collaborators have now demonstrated a transistor made of the 2D semiconductor molybdenum disulfide. In their device, a carbon nanotube laid underneath a flake of the material acts as the gate, switching the current off when a voltage is applied to it. The nanotube's one-nanometre width makes it the shortest transistor gate ever built, Javey says.
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Shortest transistor made. Nature 538, 293 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/538293e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/538293e
