A team of scientists at the Tyndall National Institute in Cork, Ireland has created what they claim is the world’s first junctionless transistor.
The invention represents a breakthrough in transistors and nanoelectronics, and has the potential to revolutionize microchip manufacturing.
The approach uses a control gate around a silicon nanowire to control the passage of electrons without the use of junctions.
The Tyndall team, led by Professor Jean-Pierre Colinge, says the transistors are relatively easy to make and could help to extend Moore’s law and reduce manufacturing costs.
The transistor is the fundamental building block in electronic devices. On silicon computing chips, the number of transistors reflects the relative amount of processing power the chip has. Since the 1970s the number of transistors built on a silicon chip has grown from just a few hundred to more than two billion transistors on a single chip. Today’s electronic devices are driving the need for more transistors on each chip, while also requiring semiconductor chips that are smaller, more energy efficient, and more cost effective. The conventional transistor architectures used for the last 40 years can no longer keep up with this demand.
