New transistor technology is capable of surpassing silicon.

MIT engineers have proven a technique that can bring about a new critical phase in the microelectronic revolution, the revolution that has produced iPods, laptops and more.

Mr. Dae-Huy Kim presented this study at the IEEE International Electron Device Conference from 11 to 13 December. Mr. Kim is a postdoctoral associate of the laboratory of Professor Jesus del Alamo, professor of learning. MIT Institute of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, a member of the MIT's micro system engineering laboratory (MTL).

'If we don't do something quite soon, the microelectronic revolution that enriches our lives in many different areas may slow down and eventually stop,' Mr. del Alamo said.

What is the problem? Engineers estimate that in the next 10 to 15 years we will reach the limits of the silicon transistor industry, which is limited in size and performance. 'Each of us has several billion transistors working for us every day in devices like phones, laptops, iPods, cars, kitchens and more,' explains Mr. Del Alamo.

Therefore, del Alamo's labs and other laboratories around the world are studying to find new materials and technologies that can surpass the limits of silicon. "We are working on semiconductor materials for transistors, materials that will continue to improve performance as device sizes become smaller and smaller," said Del Alamo .

One such work, Del Alamo and students at MTL, is a family of semiconductors called III-V semiconductor compounds. Unlike silicon, these semiconductor compounds are complex materials. The most successful compound is indium gallium arsenide, or InGaAs, a material that electrons can move in that material a lot faster than in silicon. Therefore, we can make very small transistors but can still transmit and process information very quickly.

(Photo: shef.ac.uk) Del Alamo's team has demonstrated this by making InGaAs transistors capable of carrying 2.5 times more current than modern silicon devices. Best. More current is the way to operate faster. In addition, each InGaAs transistor is only 60 nanometers long or one-billionth of a meter, equivalent to 65-nanometer-long transistors built by the world's most advanced silicon technology today.

'Professor del Alamo' group has demonstrated that the quantum-well transistor (InGaAs) is 60 nanometers long, providing very good results when tested at a low voltage source (eg 0.5 V). and is a study that marks a very important milestone, ' said Robert Chau, senior director of transistor research and nanotechnology at Intel, the sponsor for this study.

However, Mr. del Alamo noted that InGaAs transistor technology is still in the step of comparison. There are several challenges in producing transistors in large quantities because InGaAs tends to be more easily destroyed than silicon. But Mr. del Alamo expects that the first InGaAs device with the required size will grow within the next 2 years and the technology will ' take off ' in the next decade or so.

'With further research, this semiconductor technology could outperform silicon and allow us to continue microelectronic networks for years to come.' Mr. Del Alamo said

In addition to Intel, this study is also funded by Advanced Research Group on Electronics. MIT's transistor is built thanks to the force of three MIT labs, including the micro-system technology laboratory, the laboratory of the Scanning technology - Electron - Beam rays and nanostructured labs. Mr. Del Alamo reasoned that the cause of the extraordinary performance of these transistors was due to the high quality of semiconductor materials, the materials prepared by Singapore's MBE Institute of Technology.

Thanh Van