Infineon launches world's smallest nanoscale transistor

Infineon Technologies (Infineon), a Munich laboratory, has recently made a breakthrough-the researchers here have successfully developed the world's smallest nano-transistor with a trench length of only 18 nanometers, almost one-fourth of the current state-of-the-art transistor products. To make this nano-transistor, the researchers used a controllable process to produce carbon nanotubes ranging in diameter from 0.7 nm to 1.1 nanometers, just equivalent to one out of 10,000 of the diameter of human hair filaments.

The special properties of carbon nanotubes make it an ideal choice for many applications in the field of microelectronics. With the "ballistic" electronic transmission characteristics, carbon nanotubes in the transmission of electricity can almost avoid surface friction, so its transmission capacity is more than thousand times of copper wire. In addition, they can be fully conductive and can be used as semiconductors. Infineon is one of the pioneers in the development of carbon nanotubes and the first semiconductor company to demonstrate how to make carbon nanotubes in precise locations and how to produce transistors for converting higher currents.

The newly-invented nano-transistor can provide more than 15µa current when the voltage is only 0.4 V (the current standard voltage is 0.7 V). In the experiment, its current density is more than 10 times times that of today's standard material, the silicon transistor. Based on the test results, Infineon's researchers are confident that they can continue to shrink the size of the transistor. If carbon nanotubes are used as a transistor material, the power supply voltage can even be lowered to 0.35 V, which, according to Itrs forecasts, is unlikely to be achieved by 2018. The research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).