Y-shaped nanotubes are ready-made transistors

August 16, 2005 | Source: NewScientist.com News

Y-shaped carbon nanotubes grown with iron-titanium particles are easily made and act as remarkably efficient electronic transistors that are 100 times smaller than the transistors used in today’s microprocessors.

So they could be used to create microchips several orders of magnitude more powerful than the ones used in computers today, with no increase in chip size. The Y-shaped nanotubes measure just tens of nanometers in size. Eventually, they could even be shrunk to just a few nanometers, the researchers suggest.

Applying a voltage to the stem of the Y precisely controls the flow of electrons through the other two branches.