Atom-Thick Transistor
Researchers at the University of Manchester in England have made a single-electron transistor using graphene, a sheet of graphite only one atom thick. Andre Geim, the professor of physics who led the work, says the transistor consists of electrical contacts that supply and collect current through three-nanometer-wide areas containing a central island of graphene, called a quantum dot. When current is applied, an electron jumps from one contact to the quantum dot and then to the other contact. A problem with previous single-electron transistors, says Geim, is that quantum dots of other materials, when shrunk this much, act “like a droplet of liquid on a hot plate” at room temperature. Graphene quantum dots, however, are stable. The Manchester research could yield a practical technology if fabrication techniques advance enough to produce such small features.

Keep Reading
Most Popular
The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it
Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.
How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language
For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.
Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?
An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.