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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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I thought they made them so small that they would interfere with each other if they made them any smaller.
The article mentions this, and says these new transistors actually take advantage of quantum tunnelling at those small scales to switch the transistors on and off. Usually that's accomplished by charging up a conductive channel in a traditional MOSFET like a capacitor.
The disadvantage seems to be that these transistors can only control very tiny currents. They currently lack enough ass to control much else.
Not familiar with this particular paper but transistors are good at acting as switches for higher powered loads so I wonder if these ultra tiny ones can be used to power on slightly less tiny versions which can handle larger circuits.
That's basically how IGBTs in power electronics work, in stuff like trains and electric cars. It's a sensitive, easily activated voltage-driven MOSFET driving a larger BJT transistor in a chain.
Also how Darlington pairs work. So, yeah, maybe they could do all the computation at that level and then cascade the output through larger transistors to talk to the outside world.