Tuesday, November 23, 1999

World's Smallest Transistor -- 10:58 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Those crazy folks at UC-Berkley stopped smoking banana peels long enough to come up with an amazing new transistor that is 10x smaller than those currently in use. Here's the goods:

The FinFET has a 18-nanometer-long gate, about the width of 100 atoms. It is not visible to the naked eye but can be viewed with a scanning electron microscope. Hu hopes to cut this length by half in future work.

"But what we've actually produced is already 10 times shorter than what industry is now using," he said.

Yes, you read right, kids, 100 atoms across. Or as we Northern Wisconsinites would say, "It's real teensy." Here's the best part:

The prototype was successfully fabricated last July and shows good performance characteristics, Hu said. No patent has been taken on the device.

"We made the decision not to patent," Hu said. "We want the widest possible usage. We hope this becomes a mainstream transistor structure in the future."

Technology marches on! Of course, we're getting to the point now that we're about to run into the brick wall of physics, but this new technology should last a while anyway. Thanks Slashdot.

News for 11/23/1999

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).