Others are changing the material used for the gate from silicon dioxide to hafnium dioxide nanorods. For example, some researchers are exploring ways to use 2D materials like molybdenum disulfide to improve the transistor channel. If the transistor’s control of on and off no longer exists, it cannot speak binary, and your processor is useless!īut in addition to causing problems with silicon transistors, nano-scale effects have the potential to open up lots of possibilities for new transistor technology. In the context of our transistor, this means the gate cannot prevent the flow of electrons through the channel. Electron tunneling is like teleportation: when materials are really thin (less than a nanometer), the electrons can move right through them. The quantum effect that alters the performance of nanotransistors is called electron tunneling. At such small sizes, the classical behaviors of matter and energy are different. However, as transistors reach the nanoscale, we enter into the world of quantum mechanics. Moore’s Law from 1965, which predicted an exponential increase in the number of transistors that can fit on a circuit, has generally proved to be true. The fact that you can check your email, play a game, and listen to music on your phone all at the same time is largely a result of nanotechnology helping to shrink transistors! This means the device will be faster and can execute more tasks. The more transistors in a device, the more combinations of binary codes it can process. The number of transistors that can fit in an IC is called a transistor count. Multiple transistors are combined into what is called an integrated circuit (IC). This on and off status translates perfectly to the binary language of computers, which is composed of different combinations of ones and zeros that tell the device what to do. 2 Once the silicon is doped, the movement of electrons can either be turned on (allowing the flow of electrons), or off (stopping the flow of electrons), using a voltage. Alone, silicon cannot control the movement of electrons, so an impurity must be added in a process called doping, typically with boron, phosphorus, selenium or germanium. The most popular semiconducting material for making computer transistors is silicon (hence the name Silicon Valley). The University of Manchester Atlas in 1963: one of the world’s first supercomputers (image by Ian MacCallum )
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