Researchers Create Single-Atom Transistor

HardOCP ^ | Monday February 20, 2012 | Steve

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

For those of you that haven't seen this yet, Researchers from Purdue, the University of Melbourne and the University of New South Wales have created a working transistor from a single atom. Thanks to Robert for the link.

We have fabricated a single-atom transistor in which a single phosphorus atom is positioned between highly doped source and drain leads with a lateral spatial accuracy of ±1 atomic lattice spacing. We demonstrate that we are able to register source, drain and gate contacts to the individual donor atom and observe well-controlled transitions for 0, 1 and 2 electron states, in agreement with atomistic modeling of the device.

Comments

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the Nature article:

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[Tijeras_Slim]

Good luck soldering that one with a hand iron.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

It has to have a teenie tiny point.

Sandia might have some.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Actually, I’ve been in the Micro-electronics lab there, some pretty small stuff.

[onyx]

LESS THAN $4.5k TO GO!

The funds raised in these FReepathons go to pay our current quarter expenses. But we're also going to try to replace some of our older servers and failing equipment this year so we're going to add a little extra to our FReepathon goals. John is estimating ten to fifteen thousand to do this and I'd like to get it all in place and working before the election cycle is fully heated up, so we'll try to bring in a little extra now, if we can, and the rest next quarter.

Jim Robinson

Click to Donate!

[An.American.Expatriate]

Nice, but can it make julienne fries?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Likely but they would be too small to see.

And it would take all day to make one mouthful.

[ShadowAce]

[An.American.Expatriate]

Likely

Then I want two!

[patton]

Phospherus? As in willy pete?

What could possible go wrong, when the battery catches fire ...

[The Cajun]

Good luck soldering that one with a hand iron.

Plus going to take a really small diameter solder :^)

[DariusBane]

Ah hell, I’ve made flux daubs that small!

[The Cajun]

LOL, some of the stuff I worked on required a wide field of view X20 binocular microscope and a $3000 Pace solder/desolder station with a vacuum pick up tool to handle the components............Glad I'm retired :^)

[Lx]

It's not just a transistor, it is a FET since it has a source, gate and drain connections. I wonder what it sounds like since FETs tend to sound like tubes although the obvious use is to line up a few billion to make a tiny but powerful microprocessor.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest.

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[The Cajun]

DONATE

Best do it to retire HAL :^)

[Marine_Uncle]

Rather cute trick they managed to do.