A group of physicists led by Jason Marmont at the University of North Carolina, the state proposed to use a new type of transistor, whose work is based on the photoelectric effect. This approach will reduce the size of transistors, Moore's Law and, accordingly, will continue to act in the future. Preprint article was posted at arXiv.org.

Fig. 1. Driving device FETs (left) and LET-transistors (right).

The constant increase in the number of field-effect transistors on integrated circuits, which is described by Moore's Law, due to a decrease in their size. However, current FETs already have small dimensions, so that the thickness of the semiconductor, is only a few atomic layers. The use of alloy blends, designed to improve the semiconductor properties may unpredictably affect the operation of the transistor due to the presence of extra atoms. Also, the problem is the production of components such as valves.

Scientists have proposed the use of LET-transistor channel which consists of two metal-semiconductor contacts. Each transition can be both a source (S), through which the carriers included in the transistor channel and the drain (D), which goes through. Sam channel is a semiconductor nanocrystal. At the same time LET-gate transistor is not - an electrode that supplies the input voltage, regulating the flow of electrons from source to drain. Instead, the S-D conductivity modulated light. In addition, the transition of charge carriers in the conduction band of the semiconductor is not via thermally activated semiconductors, and by optical absorption.

Physicists have created a prototype of the LET-transistor based on nanowires of CdSe. The resulting transistor demonstrated the technical characteristics of advanced FETs.

Simplified LET-transistor architecture allows to solve the problems associated with the manufacture of valves and improving the properties of semiconductors, and also to reduce the manufacturing cost. Through the use of the channel structure and principles of the photoelectric effect transistor may exhibit properties characteristic mnogozatvornyh transistors used and thus, in the implementation of logic elements. Thus, the only limitation placed on the amount of integrated circuit conductors quantum level remains.

Moore's Law was proposed by one of the founders of Intel, Gordon Moore. It describes doubling the number of transistors on chips every two years, resulting in an exponential increase in power of computing devices. The law was based on a simple observation and, although there are examples of it in other areas of production and the economy in the future, he must face the fundamental limits because infinite growth is not possible due to the laws of nature.