Australians Create Single-Atom Transistor Which Could Make Computers Millions of Times Faster
Scanning tunnelling microscope image of the single-atom transistor
IMAGE BY UNSW
Scientists from the University of New South Wales have created the smallest transistor in the world, which could pave the way for supercomputers millions of times faster than those we have today.
The team from UNSW built the transistor with a single phosphorus atom replacing an atom of silicon, to bring the atom placement error down from around 10 nanometres to half a nanometre.
“This device is perfect", said Professor Michelle Simmons, director of the UNSW Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication in a press release.
"This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy."
The single-atom nature of the transistor also means it has broken Moore’s Law (That the number of transistors fitting on a single circuit board doubles every two years) which predicted transistors would reach the single-atom level in 2020.
The scientists used a scanning tunnelling microscope to view and manipulate atoms on the silicon crystal and add phosphorus.
[SMH]