Over a year ago, we told you about graphene nano-transistors which were about one-fourth the size of a transistor. About a month ago we spoke of graphene semiconductors, which allows super fast transitions between electrical states. Well, the growing use of graphene as the basis for miniaturized nanotechnology electronic devices continues as a team out of the University of Manchester develops even smaller nano-transistors based on graphene materials.

The transistors developed are only one atom wide and ten atoms long! This is significant because previous attempts to miniaturize semiconductors at the nano-level (less than 10 nanometers) has caused the semiconductors to oxidize and fail. This is the range at which silicon-based technology is anticipated to fail.

Part of the problem with any technological development on this scale is the inherent difficulty of cutting the materials. The Manchester team points out that they "relied on chance when making such small transistors." The ability to replicate the process in a mass production setting is, therefore, uncertain, which means that we don't know if we'll be seeing a sea of graphene supercomputers or laptops anytime soon.

Related Articles:

• University of Manchester - Graphene used to create world's smallest transistor
• Science - Chaotic Dirac Billiard in Graphene Quantum Dots (abstract free, full text costs)
• ScienceDaily.com - Graphene Used To Create World's Smallest Transistor
• Graphene
• Nanotechnology
• Transistor
• Nano-transistor - February 2007
• Graphene: A Super-Speed Semiconductor - March 2008
• Controlling Atoms - March 2008

Image: Artistic rendition of the smallest graphene quantum dot, from the University of Manchester.