Metal-Air Transistors – what ‘Moore’ do we want?
The new research into metal-air transistor makes you wonder if we have been sleeping for years. It all sounds so simple: take two metal oxide electrodes, place them with a 35 nanometer air gap apart and use a substrate to control the flow of charge. It is like creating a vacuum tube on nano scale.
If the research into this new technology proofs to be successful, it will mean significant changes into the manufacturing of transistors. No semiconductor materials required, the process is relative easy and straightforward and new 3D like architectures will come into view.
Shruti Nirantar, Ph.D. Student at the RMIT University Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group In Melbourne, Australia, is one of the lead developers and believes the new technology will be able to create smaller and faster switching transistors against lower costs. What ‘Moore’ do we want?
The research is published in the Nano Letters Journal
(https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02849)