Scientists have managed to make the transistor built by the world’s smallest precision, a quantum dot of only seven atoms in a silicon crystal. Despite its incredibly small size (only four billionths of a meter long), the quantum dot is a functional electronic device, the world’s first deliberately created by placing individual atoms.
It can be used to regulate and control the flow of electrical current as a commercial transistor, but it represents a key step in a new era of miniaturization at atomic and very fast and super-computers. The discovery is reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology by a team from UNSW Centre for Quantum Computer Technology (CQCT) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The importance of this achievement is that not only are we moving atoms or by looking through a microscope,” says Professor Michelle Simmons, director and co-discovery CQCT. “We’re manipulating individual atoms and place them with atomic precision, to make a functional electronic device.”
The Australian team has been able to produce a fully electronic device silicon crystal in which only seven have replaced individual silicon atoms of phosphorus atoms. “This is a great technological achievement and is a critical step to show that it is possible to build the team final – a quantum computer in silicon.”
