Junctionless Transistors to Revolutionize Chip Technology

We have only heard about uni-junction and bi-junction transistors. Recently, the researchers at the Tyndall National Institute, UCC have developed a transistor which is junctionless. This discovery was made by the team led by Tyndall’s Professor Jean-Pierre Colinge. The first announcement was made by publishing the news in Nature Nanotechnology. The news has been accepted by the leading semiconductor manufacturers with loud applauses.

Just when ideas were being made in designing small microchips with these junctionless transistors, the news of smaller junctionless transistors was published.

The microprocessors that are being used now have almost 2 billion transistors on a single one. If a revolution is made in making a smaller structure with better performance, it will be one of the best discoveries of this century. The latest junctionless transistors have a total size of 50 nanometers. That is, almost 20 times smaller than the first type of junctionless transistors.

Apart from the better performance and smaller structure, the manufacturers are also trying to make prototypes that are more energy efficient.

The small version of junctionless transistors are said to be almost 30% more energy efficient than the transistors that are available now.

When we say that the size of such a transistor is 50 nanometers we may think that it is predictably small. But, the fact that a strand of hair is 2000 times bigger than it makes it completely unpredictable.