Scientists from the University of New South Wales have created a single-atom transistor using a repeatable technique — a world first.

Using a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM), the scientists were able to precisely manipulate hydrogen atoms around a phosphorus atom on a silicon wafer inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber. The result is the first single-atom transistor made with perfect precision, which could one day become a building block for a quantum computer.

Single-atom transistors have been created before by chance, but using this method, the team from UNSW can produce them reliably.

“This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy,” said Professor Michelle Simmons, team leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at UNSW.

Moore’s Law, which postulates that the number of transistors that can cheaply be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years, predicts that transistors will reach the single-atom level by 2020.

Although many experts expected Moore’s Law to be wrong at some point, it has shown amazing resiliency, and has so far been quite accurate.

The creator of the law, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, claims the ultimate limit of the law is at the atomic level. This latest achievement by the team at UNSW shows that we might actually reach that level in the foreseeable future.

By: DocMemory
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