21 May 2009
NIST researchers find fundamental transistor problem
Engineers at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) believe there is a fundamental flaw in the understanding of transistor noise. The engineers add that, unless the problem is solved, it could stand in the way of the creation of more efficient, lower powered devices.
The researchers encountered the problem while exploring transistor behaviour. They claims that a widely accepted model explaining errors caused by electronic 'noise' in switches does not fit the facts. For decades, they say, the engineering community has largely accepted a theoretical model that identifies these defects and helps guide efforts to mitigate them.
The theory – called the elastic tunnelling model – predicts that as transistors get smaller, the noise frequency should get higher. But NIST researcher Jason Campbell has shown that, even in nanometer sized transistors, the noise frequency remains the same. "This implies that the theory explaining the effect must be wrong," he said. "The model was a good working theory when transistors were large, but our observations clearly indicate that it's incorrect at the smaller nanoscale regimes where Campbell said: "This is a real bottleneck in our development of transistors for low power applications. We have to understand the problem before we can fix it and, troublingly, we don't know what's actually happening."
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.nist.gov
Companies
NIST
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