Physicists Create Working Transistor Consisting of a Single Atom
By - - SCIENCEDAILY Added: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:14:58 UTC Thanks
to Sci_Guy_Bri In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, an
international team of researchers, including physicists at the
University of New South Wales in Australia, have created a
working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely
in a silicon crystal. The tiny electronic device, described in a
paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, uses as
its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned
between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates.
This unprecedented atomic accuracy may yield the elementary
building block for a future quantum computer with unparalleled
computational efficiency. Until now, single-atom transistors
have been realised only by chance, where researchers either have
had to search through many devices or tune multi-atom devices to
isolate one that works. "But this device is perfect," says
Professor Michelle Sim