Finnish and Australian researchers develop a single-atom transistor
Researchers from the Helsinki University of Technology together with University of New South Wales in Australia and University of Melbourne have succeeded in building and measuring a working transistor, whose active region composes only of a single phosphorus atom in silicon. The research findings were published recently in Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society.
The rapid development of computers has been mainly based on the reduction of the size of transistors and their tighter packing. Scientists have known for a long time that this development has to slow down critically during the future decades when the even tighter inexpensive packing of transistors would require them to shrink down to the atomic length scales.
In the recently developed transistor, all the electric current passes through the same single atom. This allows researchers to study the effects arising in the extreme limit of the transistor size.
- About half a year ago, I and one of the leaders of this research, Professor Andrew Dzurak, were asked when we expect a single-atom transistor to be fabricated. We looked at each other, smiled, and said that we have already done that," says Dr. Mikko Möttönen from Helsinki University of Technology.
- In fact, our purpose was not to build the tiniest transistor for a classical computer, but a quantum bit which would be the heart of a quantum computer that is being developed worldwide.
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