Feb 20, 2012 10:26 AM ET
A team of Australian physicists has created the world's first functioning single-atom transistor, which could prove a critical building block toward the development of super-fast computers.
The tiny electronic device, described Monday 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.
While single-atom devices have been developed before, these had an error of about 10 nanometres in positioning of the atoms, which is large enough to affect functionality.
Michelle Simmons, group leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), says it is the first time "anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy."
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Lead author Martin Fueschle said this individual position is very important if you want to use the transistor as a future quantum bit (or qbit).
"If you want to have precise control at this level you need to position the individual atoms with atomic precision with respect to control gates and electrodes," he said.
The device is also remarkable, says Fuechsle, because its electronic characteristics exactly match theoretical predictions undertaken with Gerhard Klimeck's group at Purdue University in the United States and Hollenberg's group at the University of Melbourne, the joint authors on the paper.
Limits of Moore's Law
The team also believes the use of silicon to encase the transistor increases its potential for future manufacturing.
It is predicted that transistors will reach the single-atom level by about 2020 to keep pace with Moore's Law, which describes an ongoing trend in computer hardware that sees the number of chip components double every 18 months.
"We really decided 10 years ago to start his program to try and beat that law," said Simmons.
"So here we are in 2012 and we've made a single-atom transistor about 8 to 10 years ahead of where industry is going to be."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story ... -atom.html