That's why it's such big news that a team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has successfully built a functional 1 nanometer long transistor gate, which the lab claims is smallest working transistor ever made.įor years, the computing industry has been governed by Moore’s Law, which states that the the number of transistors in a semiconductor circuit doubles every two years. The smaller your transistors, the more you can fit on a chip, and the faster and more efficient your processor can be. The transistor was invented by three scientists at the Bell Laboratories in 1947.Transistor size is an important part of improving computer technology. The vertical transistor approach eliminates this problem because the gate and insulating layer are applied last in the manufacturing process, after all the high-temperature steps are completed. A major problem is that most potential replacements are sensitive to the high temperatures used in the semiconductor manufacturing process. Industry is trying to find alternative materials for the insulating layer, instead of today's silicon dioxide. Many scientists believe that this will be the end of the conventional transistor. However, these layers will soon be so thin that electrons can leak through them, which wastes power and causes the chips to fail. In recent years the insulating layers have shrunk dramatically to increase the amount of current that transistors can carry. This layer lies between the transistor's gate and the channel through which current flows, thus preventing a short circuit. The vertical transistor design also may help forestall another challenge faced when making smaller transistors: the ever shrinking insulating layer. A similar principle is used in our transistor to produce the smallest gates ever made with the control that industry requires."
"However, if you paint a flat surface, cut it vertically and look at it on edge, you will see a line that's as thin as the layer of paint. "If you just tried to paint the line freehand, that would be similar to the light approach. "Suppose you have a can of paint and a big paintbrush, and you are asked to paint the thinnest possible line," Hergenrother said. The vertical transistor may solve this problem by using the thickness of a precisely-controlled layer of material, rather than light, to set the gate size. However, as transistors continue to shrink in size, light will be unable to produce the smaller features required. Light is used to etch patterns on silicon chips. "Our vertical transistor eventually could supersede the conventional transistor, which many experts in the semiconductor industry anticipate will hit a brick wall within the next 10 years," said Bell Labs researcher Jack Hergenrother. This means that the vertical transistor could nearly double the processing speeds of some silicon chips.
The vertical transistor, however, resembles a rectangular block with a "gate" on two sides. The 50-nanometer transistor - roughly 1/2000 the width of a human hair - is known as a "vertical" transistor because all of its components are built on top of a silicon wafer.Īnother key difference is that a conventional transistor has only one "gate," which switches current on and off. It could also double the processing speeds of some chips. This new design may allow silicon chips to continue to get smaller. Scientists have produced the world's smallest transistor. By BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David Whitehouse