Summary

Original source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6997

Details

• Researchers at US microchip company Intel and UK research firm Qinetiq developed the transistor using a novel semiconducting material - indium antimonide.
• Indium antimonide allows electrons to speed through faster than conventional silicon-based transistors due to its highly active and greater number of "charge-carriers" - which help relay the electrons quickly.
• But these charge-carriers also make these transistors more difficult to control than silicon ones, except at extremely low temperatures - around 77 Kelvin (-196°C).
• To overcome this temperature limitation, the researchers sandwiched pure indium antimonide between layers of the same material mixed with aluminium.
• The isolated pure material acts as a "quantum well", confining electrons which travel at high speed but which can also be controlled at very low voltage.
• Tim Phillips, business manager in Qinetiq's Fast Transistors group, says the technique could be harnessed to make more efficient transistors for electronic circuits.
• "Right now, you could make a processor that would be as fast as silicon but use one-tenth of the power," he told New Scientist.
• Philips says the new transistors could help semiconductor firms overcome twin challenges: "There is an immediate problem with power and, in the longer term, problems with speed as well."
• The next step is to design the transistors to be integrated with current silicon manufacturing processes.
• Only then would the technology be a viable alternative to silicon.
• In 1965, Intel's co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that the speed of microprocessors would double every couple of years.
• The prediction has held true for decades and underpins other advances in computing.
• "Indium antimonide is one example of several new materials that Intel will continue to investigate in order to ensure that Moore's Law extends well beyond the next decade," says Ken David, director of components research for Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group.

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