Nanoscale, three-dimensional transistors could enable more efficient electronics

Good news!

"... researchers fabricated a different type of three-dimensional transistor using a unique set of ultrathin semiconductor materials.

Their devices, featuring vertical nanowires only a few nanometers wide, can deliver performance comparable to state-of-the-art silicon transistors while operating efficiently at much lower voltages than conventional devices. ...

The transistors leverage quantum mechanical properties to simultaneously achieve low-voltage operation and high performance within an area of just a few square nanometers. ...

the engineers were able to carefully control the 3D geometry of their transistors, creating vertical nanowire heterostructures with a diameter of only 6 nanometers. They believe these are the smallest 3D transistors reported to date.

Such precise engineering enabled them to achieve a sharp switching slope and high current simultaneously. This is possible because of a phenomenon called quantum confinement.

Quantum confinement occurs when an electron is confined to a space that is so small that it can’t move around. When this happens, the effective mass of the electron and the properties of the material change, enabling stronger tunneling of the electron through a barrier. ...

When the researchers tested their devices, the sharpness of the switching slope was below the fundamental limit that can be achieved with conventional silicon transistors. Their devices also performed about 20 times better than similar tunneling transistors. ...

significantly improving the broken-gap tunnel field effect transistor (TFET) performance. ..."

From the abstract:

"The development of data-centric computing requires new energy-efficient electronics that can overcome the fundamental limitations of conventional silicon transistors. A range of novel transistor concepts have been explored, but an approach that can simultaneously offer high drive current and steep slope switching while delivering the necessary scaling in footprint is still lacking. Here, we report scaled vertical-nanowire heterojunction tunnelling transistors that are based on the broken-band GaSb/InAs system. The devices offer a drive current of 300 µA µm−1 and a sub-60 mV dec−1 switching slope at an operating voltage of 0.3 V. The approach relies on extreme quantum confinement at the tunnelling junction and is based on an interface-pinned energy band alignment at the tunnelling heterojunction under strong quantization."

Nanoscale transistors could enable more efficient electronics | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Researchers are leveraging quantum mechanical properties to overcome the limits of silicon semiconductor technology."

Scaled vertical-nanowire heterojunction tunnelling transistors with extreme quantum confinement (no public access)