This article was taken from the June 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Nanotransistors just got a lot more nano. A new process cooked up by Applied Materials (wired 01.12) in Santa Clara creates atom-scale transistors. The company can now coax a few dozen of the little guys to assemble themselves into a base layer that helps control the flow of electricity on computer chips.
Applied Materials devised a way to keep several interconnected manufacturing machines in a near-total vacuum -- at this level, a single stray nanoparticle can ruin everything. The new base layer is made from hafnium (also used in nuclear control rods) instead of the standard silicon oxynitride, which is terrible at holding back electrons on a supersmall scale.
The revamped system means transistors can be about 22 nanometers wide, as opposed to the current standard of <span class="s1">about 45 nanometers, resulting in smaller, cheaper computing devices. View the gallery to see how the shrinking happens.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
