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It is hard to play down the significance of the transistor in modern technology.  The transistor makes so many electronic devices operate and so many emerging technologies possible.  A single smartphone or laptop computer might have billions of transistors.  The transistor is integrated in virtually every major technology in the world and new developments in transistor technology may transform the tech sector yet again.

A transistor is a semiconducting material that has two inputs and one output. When feeding electrical current through the two inputs, a transistor multiplies the current as it releases it through the output. That way, transistors working in series can take a weak signal, like a distant Wi-Fi, and amplify it so that your device can use the Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet. Transistors are essential to electronic devices because they enhance all kinds of signals, from within an electronic device, as well as signals the device receives.

There are billions of transistors on the microprocessor chip in your smartphone, your laptop, your desktop, and your tablet. With the ability to make smaller transistors and smaller processor chips, manufacturers have been able to develop the portable computers we love so much. What if they could shrink the transistors to the size of an atom? What technologies could we have then?

The University of New South Wales in Australia has managed to create a stable one-atom transistor. Other researchers have created one-atom transistors by accident, but they have been remarkably unstable.  Before now, no one has managed to purposely replicate or create a one-atom transistor one where the atom did not move. The Australian research group has found a way to use a phosphorus atom to manipulate hydrogen atoms on a silicon chip – thus creating the first single atom transistor.

There are many potential applications for this advance in transistor technology, the most obvious being smaller, faster computers. Mobile computers could eventually be manufactured as thin as a sheet of paper if the transistors were only as thick as an atom! One-atom transistors could make cybernetic implants a reality because the interfaces between biological components and technological devices would be incredibly small and non-intrusive. The one-atom transistor could conceivably help the tech sector reduce vast amounts of manufacturing waste while pushing the boundaries of processor speeds and data storage capacity.

It is exciting to know that we live in a time of constant change, where researchers are inventing technologies that will shape the future of our entire world. The one-atom transistor, as it continues to be refined, represents an incredible new change that has the potential to change the entire tech sector.

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