One of the most revolutionary inventions of the 20th century was the transistor, which revolutionized electronics. By making the vacuum tube obsolete, the transistor allowed cheap, small-scale production of electronic devices. Computers went from filling whole buildings to fitting in a telephone, with many times the computing power.

Never content with "good enough," physicists and electrical engineers continually work on ways to improve this clever little device. For years, they've been investigating nano-scale transistors, but the problem has been that all the concepts would require complex and costly manufacturing techniques or cryogenic cooling to keep from overheating.

New research shows that it may be possible to create a transistor that is four times smaller than current silicon transistors using graphene, a sheet of honeycomb-shaped carbon atoms, formed into a "nano-ribbon."

Related Articles:

• About Physics - What is a Transistor?
• Nature - Graphene steps up to silicon's challenge
• New Scientist - Atom-thick carbon transistor could succeed silicon