Ever feel like your phone is taking an awfully long time to register that swipe to unlock? Well, scientists from Imperial College London and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology are developing a solution that could mean faster response times. By combining polymer semiconductors and small molecules into a composite material to make organic thin-film transistors -- a process known as composite collaboration -- they found a way to increase the speed of the electrical charge moving through a device's components. The end result could someday be a smartphone that reacts to your touch much more quickly than your current handset. If you're so inclined, jump below the break to the presser for a more in-depth explanation.
Scientists from the University of New South Wales have created a single-atom transistor using a repeatable technique — a world first.
Using a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM), the scientists were able to precisely manipulate hydrogen atoms around a phosphorus atom on a silicon wafer inside an ultra-high vacuum chamber. The result is the first single-atom transistor made with perfect precision, which could one day become a building block for a quantum computer.
Single-atom transistors have been created before by chance, but using this method, the team from UNSW can produce them reliably.
“This is the first time anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy,” said Professor Michelle Simmons, team leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at UNSW.
