Tech Shout!

Scientists at University of Manchester have developed the world’s smallest transistor. The new transistor is as small as one atom thick and ten atoms across.

The tiny transistor is made from a new material called grapheme. The graphene is the first known material which is one-atom-thick that can be viewed as a plane of atoms derived from graphite.

Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester were headed the research.

“These transistors will work and work at ambient, room temperature conditions - just what is required for modern electronics,” Dr. Novoselov told BBC.

Further Dr. Novoselov added that these transistors are good conductors for that make a perfect material for chip applications. Such high performance from these transistors and and its small size may help to develop super-fast computer chips in the future.

“It is already superior to silicon by an order of magnitude and comparable to the best samples of other materials. We believe we can increase this mobility of electron flow 10-fold,” added Dr. Novoselov

However more research needs to be conducted on the new transistors and it might take further ten years before the first integrated circuits on graphene chips is developed.