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Smallest Transistor Ever Developed Features One Nanometre Gate!

The laws of physics set the benchmark for transistor gates at 5-nanometre, something that has made the continued shrinking of CPUs harder and harder as that tiny limit creeps over the horizon, but one team seems to have cracked it, creating a transistor with a gate of just one nanometre! Given that Intel will be pushing their 10nm hardware next year, 1nm is a hell of an innovation.

“We made the smallest transistor reported to date. The gate length is considered a defining dimension of the transistor,” said Ali Javey of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “We demonstrated a 1-nanometre-gate transistor, showing that with the choice of proper materials, there is a lot more room to shrink our electronics,” he said.

“The semiconductor industry has long assumed that any gate below 5 nanometres wouldn’t work, so anything below that was not even considered,” said study lead author Sujay Desai, a graduate student in Javey’s lab. “By changing the material from silicon to MoS2, we can make a transistor with a gate that is just one nanometre in length, and operate it like a switch,” he added.

There’s a lot of work to be done still, and this kind of hardware isn’t close to practical for CPUs like the ones we see in our desktop computers. However, it’s a step in the right direction and changes the rules on what was thought possible, so it should help lead to further innovations in the transistor market over the coming years.

Peter Donnell

As a child still in my 30's (but not for long), I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!

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